Turkey: Three-year-old girl rescued from collapsed building days after deadly earthquake
A three-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Izmir on Monday as officials race to find more survivors after a powerful earthquake struck the Aegean sea region three days ago, killing at least 85 people in Turkey and Greece.
The earthquake collapsed eight buildings in Izmir and was the most powerful quake to strike Turkey in nearly a decade.
Greek officials also confirmed that two teenagers had died on the island of Samos, the centre of the quake.
Three-year-old Elif Perincek was rescued 65 hours after the 6.9-magnitude quake struck Turkey and Greece on Friday, the Turkish emergency authority AFAD said.
Television footage showed the young girl being pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed building by rescue workers and carried to an ambulance on a stretcher.
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Elif’s two sisters and brother were rescued along with their mother on Saturday, but one of the children subsequently died.
"A thousand thanks to you, my God. We have brought out our little one, Elif, from the apartment block,” Mehmet Gulluoglu, head of AFAD, wrote on Twitter.
Another girl, 14-year-old Idil Sirin was also rescued by AFAD on Sunday.
But the family's joy was brief as the lifeless body of Idil's sister, Ipek, was found, the Hurriyet newspaper reported.
"I can't hear any sounds from my sister, she's dead," Idil told rescuers as she was being pulled out, Hurriyet said.
Turkey's toll from the quake is continuing to rise, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum reporting 83 dead.
Nearly 1,000 people were injured, with over 200 still in hospital.
More than 3,500 tents and 13,000 beds have been supplied to provide temporary shelter for those made homeless by the earthquake, according to AFAD.
It was the deadliest seismic event in Turkey since an earthquake in the eastern city of Van in 2011 which killed more than 500 people. A quake in January this year killed 41 people in the eastern province of Elazig.
Turkey is crossed by many fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey.
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