This is the astonishing moment a nine-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of her home in Turkey after 60 hours trapped there.
The girl was rescued from the 'Armageddon' of rubble-strewn Antakya yesterday morning, after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit on Monday. The video clip, which was filmed by British aid worker Atiqur Rahman, showed the pig-tailed youngster being passed from rescue worker to rescue worker as she was carried to safety.
The relieved workers clapped and smiled as the miracle unfolded. The girl's brother, 13, and her father were also rescued but her mother is yet to be found, the Mirror reports.
READ MORE: How people in Greater Manchester can help after Turkey and Syria earthquake
Mr Rahman, from Stoke-On-Trent, works for Global Relief Trust and described the scenes in the earthquake-stricken country as like 'Armageddon'.
"It’s Armageddon here," he described. "Now it’s 64/65 hours since the earthquake, the chances of people coming out alive is very low.
"But you have these amazing cases where because the foundations have gone on top of one another, the buildings have collapsed layer by layer, people manage to get into gaps. There was some noise coming from this family under the rubble, and some relatives stood outside as they knew the family was there.
"When they were carried out they were conscious and moving, obviously traumatised, but physically they were unharmed. One of our guys carried them out and the girl was responding to him.
"We get overwhelmed as soon as there is one case of good news. One guy has done a 28-hour shift and he said ‘We have pulled out seven alive but 100 bodies’, so with those kinds of odds everyone celebrates every person alive.
"Each case takes two to four, five hours, to get through to people."
The girl, her brother and father were a rare case as so far, the death toll following the devastating quake has surpassed 15,000. The first 7.8-magnitude quake hit the Turkish city of Gaziantep in the early hours of Monday, reducing thousands of homes and buildings across the south of the country and northern Syria to rubble as people slept.
A series of aftershocks has left tens of thousands injured and survivors are feared trapped under thousands of collapsed buildings. Relief efforts have been hampered by damaged infrastructure, freezing winter temperatures and limited medical facilities.
Around 70 members of the UK International Search and Rescue Team have arrived in Turkey to assist with the search operation. The team of volunteers, which included firefighters, medics, engineers and vets, was joined by crews from at least 24 countries.
UK International Search and Rescue team coordinator Mark Davey said it had taken a lot of organisation to get to Antakya, in the Hatay province, due to the amount of destruction caused to basic infrastructure.
“Transportation is very difficult here, so it took a lot of organisation to get enough vehicles to bring us,” he told the Associated Press. “It took a long while to get a lot of the equipment over here on the vehicles, on buses. (We had) a lot of help from the local people as well – from bus companies.”
Find out how you can help after the Turkey and Syria earthquake here.
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