Rescuers have pulled more survivors from the debris of the Feb. 6 earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria even as the window for finding people alive is closing fast.
Here's a look at the key developments Friday from the aftermath of the earthquake.
DEATH TOLL RISES
The Turkish disaster management agency has updated the death toll from the powerful earthquake in Turkey to 38,044, raising the overall number of fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 41,732.
The death toll is certain to increase further as search teams retrieve more bodies amid the devastation.
The powerful 7.8 earthquake has become Turkey’s deadliest disaster in modern history.
MORE SURVIVORS RESCUED
More than 10 days after the powerful earthquake struck, rescuers overnight pulled out a child, a woman and two men alive from wreckage.
The latest rescues came as crews began clearing up debris in cities devastated by the earthquake.
Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras, after being trapped for 258 hours when a forklift operator lifted her bed and noticed her hand move, the private DHA news agency reported late Thursday.
Her father, Cuma Yalcinoz, had been waiting outside the building. “I believed she would come out,” he said. “I had a feeling.” Kilic’s husband and children were still missing.
In the city of Antakya, police rescue crews found 12-year-old Osman alive after retrieving 17 bodies from a collapsed building.
“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at the 260th hour,” police rescue team leader Okan Tosun told DHA.
An hour later, crews reached two men inside the debris of a collapsed hospital in Antakya.
One of them, Mustafa Avci, used the mobile phone of a rescuer to call his brother and ask about family members.
“Have they all survived? he asked. “Let me hear their voices.”
