Search and rescue teams managed to extract a mother and her two children from the rubble in Hatay province on Wednesday evening, 228 hours after a strong earthquake struck southern Turkey last week.
The mother and her two children were taken to hospital immediately, ‘Anadolu’ news agency reported.
Turkish authorities had earlier promised that search teams would continue rescue work until “the last victim is extracted from the rubble”, despite dwindling hopes of finding survivors as the death toll rises. keeps climbing past 35,000.
Thousands of local and foreign teams are still taking part in search and rescue operations, while other teams have returned to their countries of origin.
The earthquake, which occurred on February 6 at 04:17 local time (01:17 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers, caused the collapse of hundreds of buildings in the Turkish localities of “Kahramanmaraş”, “Gaziantep”, “Adana”, “Malatya”, “Diyarbakir”, “Sanliurfa” and “Osmaniye”.
A few hours after this first violent tremor, another earthquake struck north of the city of Gaziantep with almost the same intensity and near the epicenter of the first earthquake, which worsened the toll of the disaster.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared official mourning for a period of seven days and a state of emergency in affected areas for three months.