Three new survivors, including a 14-year-old boy, were rescued from the rubble of Antakya in southern Turkey more than 260 hours after the earthquake that devastated the region, Turkish authorities and the press reported on Friday.
Mustafa, 33, and Mehmet, 26, were rescued “261 hours” after the earthquake, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
The television channel CNN Türk showed her as Mustafa Avci or Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu.
Shortly before, at the “260. hour”, a 14-year-old boy was also freed from the rubble of his building in the center of Antakya “after intensive efforts”, the minister reported.
Mr Koca says the teenager, named Osman, underwent “a procedure” at a provincial hospital without specifying the severity, but he appears to be conscious in the photo.
According to the DHA news agency, the two men, Mehmet and Mustafa, were in the rubble of the same building in central Antakya when they were spotted by the emergency services.
The minister states that they were immediately taken to the hospital.
“Our brother Mustafa remembered the phone number of a relative he could call,” says the minister, who also broadcasts a short video.
We hear the young man ask: “Is my mother okay?” and shows a big smile when his interlocutor tearfully replies: “Everyone is fine!”.
The latest official death toll from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria at 4 a.m. (1 a.m. GMT) on February 6 surpassed 41,000.
The last survivors, spotted by rescuers as the search is gradually being phased out, were all found in Hatay province, near Antakya near the Syrian border.
The chances of survival appear slimmer now, further north, around the earthquake’s epicenter, in mountainous regions like Kahramanmaras and even in the snow-capped regions of Elbistan and Adiyaman, where the thermometer has dropped to -15C at night, the AFP teams noted.