Survivors still being rescued as quake toll tops 25,000

ANTAKYA: The death toll in Turkey and Syria from the earthquake that struck five days ago has surpassed 25,000.

Turkiye’s president on Saturday raised the death toll in his country to 21,848, while in Syria, the reported number of dead was 3,553 in government and rebel-held areas.

Some 80,104 people have been injured in Turkey alone, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. A few survivors are still being pulled from the rubble, however, more than 130 hours after the quake.

Rescue teams in Turkiye on Saturday pulled to safety a family of five who survived inside their collapsed home for five days following a major earthquake in a sprawling border region of Turkiye and Syria. The death toll, however, was approaching 25,000.

The rescues bring to 12 the number of people rescued on Saturday, despite diminishing hopes amid freezing temperatures.

The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s quake collapsed thousands of buildings, killing more than 24,500 people, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.

Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning. Rescuers were shifting to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign of the weakness of any remaining survivors.