Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Aegean Earthquake: child rescued after 65 hours under rubble

Elif’s rescue was shown on television, with her being carried to a hospital tent.

• November 2, 2020
Turkey Earthquake
Photo from Turkey Earthquake Site (Credit: middleeasteye.net)

A three-year-old girl was on Monday pulled out from the rubble 65 hours after a deadly earthquake rocked Turkey’s western coast as the death toll climbed to 83.

Rescue workers performed the delicate task of extricating the girl, Elif, from the rubble of an apartment building in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir, disaster management agency AFAD said.

A massive tremor centred in the Aegean Sea had hit both Turkey and Greece three days ago.

The toll had risen to 83, said Environmental and Urban Planning Minister Murat Kurum, with more bodies recovered in the country’s third-largest city.

Two teenagers also died on the Greek island of Samos, according to media reports, after the quake that hit Turkey’s Aegean coast and Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

Elif’s rescue was shown on television, with her being carried to a hospital tent.

“I’m very happy. May God reward the rescue workers,’’ her grandmother told journalists.

Elif’s mother and three siblings were rescued from a collapsed eight-storey building after 23 hours on Saturday.

AFAD tweeted that Idil,14, was saved after being trapped for 58 hours.

Turkey lies on major fault lines and has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past, including one in the north-west in 1999 that killed more than 17,000 people.

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