Rescue teams in southern Turkey say they are still hearing voices from under the rubble more than a week after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake, offering a glimmer of hope of finding more survivors.
Live images broadcast on CNN affiliate CNN Turk showed rescuers working in two areas of the Kahramanmaras region, where they were trying to save three sisters believed to be buried under the debris.
In the same region, emergency workers saved a 35-year-old woman who was believed to have been buried for around 205 hours, according to state broadcaster TRT Haber. Two brothers – 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and 21-year-old brother Abdulbaki Yennir – were also pulled from collapsed buildings on Tuesday, the broadcaster also reported. Further east, in the city of Adiyaman, rescuers pulled an 18-year-old boy and a man alive from the rubble.
Eight days after the tremor and its violent aftershocks, more than 37,800 people have been confirmed dead across Turkey and Syria, and survival stories are becoming few and far between.
As rescue operations start to shift to recovery efforts, UN workers are racing to funnel aid to survivors in Syria through two new border crossings approved by the government in Damascus.
The United Nations welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s decision on Monday to open “the two crossing points of Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee” between Turkey and northwest Syria “for an initial period of three months to allow for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid.”
CNN
