As the days go by, it becomes more difficult to find survivors under the rubble of the houses collapsed by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey and northern Syria last Monday. After more than 90 hours and when more than 21,000 deaths have already been counted, each rescued alive is celebrated as a miracle, especially if it is a child. This is the case of the rescue of little Yagiz Ulas, a baby barely 10 days old who was found alive with his mother in the Turkish city of Samandagi, in the province of Hatay.
Turkish rescue teams pulled him out of the rubble wrapped in a thermal blanket and quickly rushed him to a hospital.
Also in Hatay, a seven-year-old girl named Asya Donmez was rescued after 95 hours and taken to hospital, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. In Diyarbakir, to the east, Sebahat Varli, 32, and her son Serhat were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday morning, 100 hours after the first quake.
But as the hours pass, hopes of finding many more alive among the ruins of thousands of collapsed buildings in towns and cities throughout the region fade.
The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude quake and several powerful aftershocks in both countries has surpassed the more than 17,000 deaths in 1999, when a similarly powerful earthquake struck northwestern Turkey.
The quake now ranks as the seventh deadliest natural disaster of this century, ahead of the 2011 Japan quake and tsunami and nearing the 31,000 death toll caused by an earthquake in neighboring Iran in 2003.
About 40% of the buildings in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of Monday's main quake, were damaged, according to a report by Turkey's Bogazici University.
