The earthquake death toll has gone past 45,000 in Turkey and Syria as rescue operation is nearing conclusion with more miraculous saves recorded even after 11 days.
Turkey’s Home Minister Süleyman Soylu announced in the morning on February 18 that 39,672 bodies were recovered in Turkey following the deadly earthquake. On the other hand, according to the information provided by the Syrian government and the United Nations in the country, the number of dead people in Syria is hovering over 5,800. It means, the number of deaths in the two countries from the February 6 earthquake now stands at 45,472.
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While many international teams have departed the earthquake-hit areas, survivors are still overcoming all odds and crawling out from under countless destroyed homes.
Latest reports show that three more survivors were rescued alive from the rubble of the earthquake. One such example is 45-year-old Hakan Yasinoglu, who is a rescuer from Hatay and was stuck in the rubble for 178 hours.
Just prior to that, the lives of Mustafa Avci (34) and Osman Halebiye (14) were rescued from the rubble in Antakya, a historic city in Turkey that was formerly known as Antioch. An exhausted Avci was reunited with his wife, Bilge, and daughter, Almile, at a hospital in Mersin.
All of these cases give us hope that there will be more survivors amid the rubble of the earthquake’s aftermath. As rescue operation nears, the number of both rescues and deaths rise.
