British rescue teams pulled survivors of the Turkish earthquake to safety today as dire warnings were issued that thousands more were at risk of dying trapped in rubble.
As the number of dead rose beyond 19,300 dramatic images showed mother Serap Topal, 33, and her five-year-old son, Mehmet Hamza, being rescued by British and German aid workers in Kahramanmaras — 68 hours after the first earthquake struck.
It came as another UK rescue team in Antakya located a 60-year-old woman named Salva, buried under a collapsed three-storey building for three days without food or water.
Davey the sniffer dog was the first to confirm that she was alive and she was carried to safety on a stretcher.
London firefighter Sarah Mimnagh, part of the 77-strong UK ISAR (International Search and Rescue) team, spoke to her throughout the painstaking rescue.
She told the BBC: ‘The fact that she had been in there for three-and-a-half days and was still talking… she was smiling the minute she saw us.’
The number of death victims keep increasing as death toll passes 19,300 already.
Hopes are already fading for thousands still in quake rubble. In some towns, heavy machinery is being used to check for bodies and make buildings safe — a sign that hope of finding survivors has ended.
Giving an updated death toll on Thursday afternoon, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says 16,170 people have died in his country alone.In Syria, 3,162 deaths have been reported.
A further 65,000 have been injured and as many as 23 million are thought to have been left homeless and destitute by the quakes, the first of which occurred at around 4am on Monday, it was confirmed.
The World Health Organisation warned that without shelter, water, fuel or electricity, a secondary disaster may unfold — causing more to lose their lives than the initial quake.
WHO earthquake response incident manager Robert Holden said: ‘We’ve got a lot of people who have survived now out in the open, in worsening and horrific conditions.
‘We are in real danger of seeing a secondary disaster which may cause harm to more people than the initial disaster if we don’t move with the same pace and intensity as we are doing on the search and rescue.’
Retired Major General Sir Tim Cross told Sky News that helicopter support was required and roads needed to be cleared.
‘You need people on the ground allocating resources, understanding what is needed. So there is a whole raft of issues that are going on here.’
He added: ‘You’ve got the people who are buried but you also have the survivors. Those survivors need to be given shelter, water, food, sanitation, medical support, power — all of those issues that are essentially logistics issues.’
