The death toll from the earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey on February 6 has reached 40,000, according to the Turkish authorities. Nearly two weeks later 3 survivors were found.
The Turkish Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, announced Friday evening that the updated toll of human losses from the earthquake reached precisely 39,672 dead and more than 108,000 injured, during a press conference.
Two people were rescued on Saturday after being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, southern Turkey, 13 days after an earthquake struck the region, killing more than 43,000 people.
The state news agency Anadolu broadcast images of the rescues of the survivors found on Saturday. A man and a woman on stretchers were pulled from the rubble after spending 296 hours trapped in Antakya.
A child was also released alive but succumbed within minutes despite efforts by medical teams to save him, according to the agency.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video of the 40-year-old woman in a field hospital while receiving treatment. “She is conscious,” he tweeted.
On Friday, a 45-year-old man was extracted from the rubble, several hours after three other survivors, including a 14-year-old boy, still alive under the rubble.
But hopes of seeing new survivors of this terrible tragedy, the worst in centuries in the region, are starting to dwindle
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 had declared official mourning for a period of seven days and a state of emergency in the affected areas for three months.