KIRIKHAN, Turkey (Reuters) – Rescuers pulled a woman alive out of the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey on Friday, prompting cheers from onlookrs about 104 hours after she was buried by the huge earthquake that wrought death and destruction across the region.
German emergency workers carefully lifted 40-year-old Zeynep Kahraman on a stretcher past shattered blocks of concrete and twisted metal in the town of Kirikhan into an ambulance.
“Now I believe in miracles,” Steven Bayer, the leader of the International Search and Rescue team said at the site.
“You can see the people crying and hugging each other. It’s such a huge relief that this woman under such conditions came out so fit. It’s an absolute miracle,” he said.
The combined death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in decades stood at 21,000 in southern Turkey and northwest Syria on Friday morning.
Hundreds of thousands more people have been left homeless and short of food in bleak winter conditions, desperate for a multi-national relief effort to alleviate their suffering.
(Reporting by Erol Dogrudogan; Writing by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Edmund Blair)
