Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Two-week-old baby rescued two days after Turkey quake

Rescuers pulled a two-week-old baby girl alive from the arms of her mother, who had also survived but was still trapped in the rubble of their apartment today, two days after a powerful earthquake in southeast Turkey.

The mother was clutching the infant to her chest when rescuers reached them, and they were working to bring her out, as well as a grandmother, who was also still alive.

"I am so excited. What can I say. Let God help them," the child's other grandmother, Sevim Yigit, told reporters, eyes brimming with tears of joy beneath her headscarf.

As she spoke, a rescuer leaned forward to reassure her: "We're going to get them out soon."

There was no word on the father, who had also been in the building when it fell.

The grandmother said the baby, named Azra, was born two weeks ago.

The large crowd gathered at the scene applauded when a rescuer emerged cradling the baby in his arms. Relieved relatives pressed forward as she was taken to an ambulance.

"We have been waiting for almost 48 hours," said a teenaged boy cousin, whose mother was also missing. "I hope my mother and aunt will be rescued as well."

The family had been trapped since the apartment block, several storeys high collapsed when the 7.2 magnitude quake stuck early on Sunday afternoon.

One side of the building was reduced to a pile of broken concrete masonry and mangled metal, while the other side was leaning, only propped up by a crane so that the rescue operation could continue more safely.

The official toll from Sunday's quake rose to 366 today, but many people were still missing under the rubble in towns and villages at the northeast end of Lake Van, Turkey's largest lake, near the border with Iran.

More buildings collapsed in Ercis, a town of 100,000 people, than elsewhere.