Greek Rescuers Pull Alive 6-Year-Old Girl from the Rubble in Turkey

Greek rescuers freed a 6-year-old girl from the rubble of her home in the city of Iskenderun, in Turkey’s Hatay province on Tuesday.

Using special equipment, the team opened a passage to reach the girl, whose arms were trapped under debris.

She has been under the rubble since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and multiple aftershocks struck eastern Turkey and neighboring Syria on Monday.

Unfortunately, the Greek team failed to save her older sister who died under the rubble.

Greek rescuers tried hard to get a young girl out of the ruble alive. They did not manage. Minutes after, they are rescuing her 6 yrs old sister. And they burst into tears. And then applauding. The mystery of life, the power of love. #Turkey, you are not alone! #TurkeyEarthquake pic.twitter.com/gS26kX6C3t

— Makis Mylonas (@MylonasMakis) February 7, 2023

Earlier the Greek team freed a 50-year-old man who was also buried under the rubble in the Turkish city.

Greek rescuers in Turkey

A team of 21 Greek firefighters with two rescue dogs and a special rescue vehicle is operating in Turkey.

The team is accompanied by a Fire Brigade officer-engineer, five doctors and rescuers from EKAB as well as the professor and president of the Earthquake Planning and Protection Organisation of Greece, Efthymios Lekkas.

Search teams and emergency aid from around the world have poured into Turkey and Syria as rescuers working in freezing temperatures dug, sometimes with their bare hands, through the remains of buildings flattened by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake.

The death toll has soared above 5,000 and was still expected to rise.

In Geneva, Unicef spokesperson James Elder has told reporters: “The earthquakes … may have killed thousands of children.”

While verified numbers were not yet available, Reuters reports he said “we know that scores of schools, hospitals and other medical and educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed by the quakes, vastly impacting children”.

Calling the quake the most powerful to hit the region in almost 100 years, Elder said Syrian refugees in northwest Syrian and in Turkey were among the most vulnerable.

The World Health Organisation had earlier warned that the total casualty figures could exceed 20,000. A quake of a similar magnitude in the region in 1999 killed at least 17,000 people.