A teenager was rescued from underneath the rubble in Turkey, more than 10 days after powerful earthquakes left behind a sea of destruction and deaths.
The 17-year-old girl was pulled alive from the ruins of a collapsed apartment block in Turkey’s south-eastern Kahramanmaras province nearly 248 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region.
Footage shared by the Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality showed the "miracle girl" being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance, covered with a gold-coloured thermal blanket.
"She looked to be in good health. She opened and closed her eyes," coal miner Ali Akdogan, who participated in the rescue, told AFP.
"We have been working here in this building for a week now... we are happy whenever we find a living thing - even a cat."
The teenager's tearful uncle hugged the rescuers one by one and said: "We will never forget you."
The death toll from the earthquake across Turkey and Syria exceeded 41,000 on Friday leading to the United Nations’s appeal for $1bn to address the humanitarian crisis.
"The needs are enormous, people are suffering and there's no time to lose," UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said in a statement, while calling for funds that would provide relief to 5.2 million people for three months.
The rescues have dwindled significantly as the weather posed a challenge to the aid workers. Turkey and Syria have not said how many people were still missing.
There has been growing anger among people who have lost their relatives over what they see as corrupt building practices and deeply flawed urban development.
“I have two children. No others. They are both under this rubble,” said Sevil Karaabduloglu, as excavators tore down what remained of a high-end block of flats in Antakya.
“We rented this place as an elite place, a safe place. How do I know that the contractor built it this way?... Everyone is looking to make a profit. They’re all guilty,” she told Reuters.
Nearly 650 people reportedly died when the Renaissance Residence building collapsed in the quake.
