Father meets newborn daughter after 11 days under the rubble in Turkey
A kiss for my hero daddy: Father is introduced to his newborn daughter for the first time after he spent ELEVEN DAYS battling to stay alive under earthquake rubble
- Mustafa Avci, 33, was rescued with Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, after 261 hours
- The quake struck 11 provinces in Turkey as well as regions in north-west Syria
A father was introduced to his newborn daughter for the first time on Friday after spending eleven days trapped under the rubble in earthquake-hit Turkey.
Mustafa Avci, 33, was rescued alongside Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26. The pair became trapped when the health centre they were in collapsed in Antakya on February 6, as south-west Turkey and parts of Syria were devastated two powerful quakes.
The men were miraculously freed from the wreckage on Friday, 261 hours after the building collapsed on top of them. Against all the odds, they survived long enough to be found and rescued, and for Avci to meet his baby daughter.
Pictures from the hospital show his wife Bilge presenting baby Almile to her father for the first time. Avci is seen kissing his daughter’s head, while lying back on a hospital bed – still hooked up to various medical tubes.
Incredible footage of his rescue in Hatay Province showed how he was still able to speak on the phone while wrapped in a thermal blanket and wearing a neck brace. In the clip, he is heard speaking excitedly on a mobile phone to his relative.
This is the tender moment a father is introduced to his newborn daughter for the first time after spending eleven days under earthquake rubble in Turkey
Pictures from the hospital show his wife Bilge presenting baby Almile to her father Mustafa Avci, 33, for the first time. Avci is seen in pictures kissing his daughter’s head, while lying back on a hospital bed while still hooked up to various medical tubes
Mustafa Avci (pictured), 33, was rescued alongside Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26. The pair became trapped when the health centre they were in collapsed on February 6, as south-west Turkey and parts of Syria were devastated two powerful quakes
‘Fahri, how are you?’ Avci is heard asking, as a rescuer holds the phone to his face. ‘How are you my dear brother?’
The relative relative is heard saying, in desbelief: ‘Brother? Where are you?’
‘I am fine. I have no problems. I think I am at [the] training and research hospital. They will direct me where ever is suitable. I have no problems,’ Avci tells the man, who is heard crying on the other end of the telephone.
‘What are my parents doing? Have they all been rescued?’ Avci asks selflessly.
‘They are all good. They are waiting for you,’ the relative responds, as Avci kisses the hand of the rescuer holding the phone, thanking him. ‘May God bless you a thousand times, brother! May God always help you in need!’ he says to the man.
Turkish rescuers also pulled a 14-year-old boy, and a mother of two from the rubble today. Osman, 14, was rescued 260 hours after the 7.8-magnitude tremor struck Turkey’s southeast and Syria, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
Koca shared an image of the adolescent with his eyes open on a stretcher and said Osman had been taken to hospital in Antakya in the devastated Hatay province.
Rescuers found Osman after hearing sounds in the rubble, Anadolu state news agency reported, and were able to pull him out alive.
Osman was found alive after rescuers retrieved 17 bodies from the same building.
In Kahramanmaras, Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a buildings after being trapped for 258 hours.
She was found 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.
The quake has killed more than 43,000 people in Turkey and Syria, injured tens of thousands of others and left millions without shelter in freezing temperatures.
The tremor struck 11 provinces in Turkey. Turkish officials have said rescue efforts in three provinces, Adana, Kilis and Sanliurfa, have been completed.
A total of 143 trucks carrying aid from Turkey into northwest Syria have crossed the border since February 9, a United Nations official said.
Osman, 14, was rescued 260 hours after the 7.8-magnitude tremor struck Turkey’s southeast and Syria, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter
In Kahramanmaras, Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a buildings after being trapped for 258 hours
Pictured: An excavator digs through pules of rubble in Turkey, February 17
READ MORE: Turkish police catch bogus cop trying to steal baby rescued from earthquake rubble from a hospital ward
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that the trucks are carrying a ‘multitude’ of items from six U.N. agencies – including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera testing kits, essential medicines, and food from the World Food Program.
They crossed through the border gates of Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh, he said.
Meanwhile, The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey’s government to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.
‘In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security,’ the Rome-based agency said in a statement.
A second tragedy struck one family on Friday when five Syrian children and their parents died when fire ripped through a Turkish home they had moved to after surviving last week’s earthquake, local media reported.
The family had relocated to the central region of Konya from the Turkish city of Nurdagi, which was badly hit by the February 6 quake, to stay with relatives.
Anadolu state news agency said the five children were aged between four and 13.
Excavators tear down damaged houses in Samandag, Turkey, 17 February 2023
Abdulrahman, 67, gestures near his destroyed house where he lost his family and waits for the body of his sister to be taken out of the rubble, in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake, in Antakya, Turkey February 17, 2023
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca visits 14-year-old Osman Halebiye, rescued under rubble of a collapsed building 260 hours after the earthquakes hit Hatay
Pictured: An aerial view of the city of Adiyaman on Thursday night
‘We saw the fire but we could not intervene. A girl was rescued from the window,’ local resident Muhsin Cakir told Anadolu.
The 11 Turkish regions hit by the quake and its nearly 5,000 aftershocks are home to more than 1.74 million refugees, according to the United Nations.
Turkey is home to nearly four million Syrians in all.
Mazen Allouch, an official on the Syrian side of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, told AFP on Friday that the bodies 1,528 Syrians killed in the quake have been repatriated home so far.
Source: Read Full Article