A family dog has been pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building 22 days after deadly earthquakes struck Turkey.
Aleks, a Siberian Husky, alerted his owners to his miracle survival by barking when they returned to the building they had once called home, and they begged rescuers to help them find their pet.
It is unclear how Aleks managed to survive for more than three weeks but it is known that he had been trapped under debris of a two-storey building that had collapsed partially on top of a huge haystack.
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Rescuers attended the scene in the Akcurun village in the Antakya district of Hatay to try to find the pet who was buried alive on February 6.
Volunteers from Animal Rights Federation- HAYTAP - and the teams of the Directorate of Technical Works of Konya Seydişehir Municipality started working on the wreckage of the house on March 2.
And after almost two hours the dog was rescued alive and lifted from the wreckage by volunteer Osman Polat who placed Aleks in the arms of his owner Murat Arıcı.
Osman said: "We understood that the dog was alive from the sounds coming from the wreckage. The area he was in was very small and under a lot of debris. But there was a small hole which was big enough for the dog to fit his nose through and get air.
"I worked around the area with a saw, and then we cut through metal and pulled it apart by hand. Somehow I managed to get hold of Aleks and pulled him towards me.
"His collar had been snagged on something too but we got him free. It's really a miracle. that he survived 22 days without eating or drinking anything inside that hole. He had obviously lost weight but his overall health condition was good considering what he had been through."
Aleks appeared shocked, weak and emaciated in video footage captured of the rescue before being given food and water. Aleks was then taken to Antakya by members of the Animal Rights Federation to their HAYTAP Sahra Hospital for assessment and treatment and is expected to be reunited with his family soon.
The Hatay province where Alex was rescued is one of the areas most devastated by the double earthquakes that rocked parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria across several days from February 6 and Aleks is thought to have been trapped on February 9.
More than 50,000 people have died and millions more have been made homeless in freezing conditions after earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria.
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