Military trucks on a damaged street in Antakya, Turkey, February 16, 2023. NIR ELIAS / REUTERS
Three new survivors, including a 14-year-old boy, were rescued from the rubble of Antakya, in southern Turkey, more than 260 hours after the earthquake that devastated the region, Turkish authorities and the press reported on Friday February 17. .
Mustafa, 33, and Mehmet, 26, were rescued.261 hoursafter the earthquake, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Twitter. CNN Türk TV channel featured them as Mustafa Avci and Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu respectively.
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“Is my mother okay?”
Just before, at the260th hour“, a 14-year-old boy was also extracted from the ruins of his building in the center of Antakya “after intense efforts“, reported the minister. Fahrettin Koca specifies that the teenager named Osman underwentan interventionin a hospital in the province, without specifying the seriousness, but he appears conscious in the photo.
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According to the DHA news agency, the two men, Mehmet and Mustafa were in the rubble of the same building, in the center of Antakya, when they were discovered by the emergency services. The Minister indicates that they were immediately taken to the hospital. “Our brother Mustafa remembered the phone number of a relative he was able to call“Says the minister who also broadcasts a short video. We hear the young man asking:Is my mother okay?» and display a broad smile when his interlocutor, in tears, answers him: «Everyone is well !“.
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The latest official toll from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 at 4 a.m. (1 a.m. Paris time) exceeds 41,000 dead. The last survivors discovered by the rescuers, while the search is gradually ceasing, were all found in the province of Hatay, around Antakya, near the Syrian border. The chances of survival now seem lower, further north, around the epicenter of the earthquake in mountainous regions such as Kahramanmaras, and even snowy regions of Elbistan and Adiyaman, where the thermometer dropped to -15°C at night. , noted the AFP teams.
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