Cape Town - While the death toll from the devastating Türkiye -Syria earthquake was last night expected to pass the 30 000 mark, a father and daughter, a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among survivors pulled from the ruins of collapsed buildings in the southern Turkish province of Hatay on Sunday.
Monday marks a week since the earthquake flattened swathes of towns and cities in parts of Türkiye and Syria, killing at least 29 605 people.
As rescue efforts entered their sixth day on Sunday, time for crews to reach trapped victims alive under the rubble was running out, but emergency crews made a number of successful rescue.
Video released by the Istanbul Municipality showed rescuers in Hatay pulling a 10-year-old girl through a hole in the floor of a damaged building before carrying her out on a stretcher.
The girl, named Cudi, had been buried for 147 hours, the Istanbul Municipality said. Also in Hatay, rescuers pulled a small child from the rubble of a collapsed building.
A video released by the Turkish health ministry showed the child lying silently on a stretcher, bruised and covered in dust, as rescuers carried her to safety.
In central Hatay, a man and his five-year-old daughter Emira were also recovered alive from a destroyed building.
Video released by the Kocaeli Municipality yesterday showed rescuers talking to Emira and her father while they were still trapped under debris.
"Hello beautiful girl, we are here to take you out," one of the rescuers said.
Around 180 km to the north of Hatay, in the city of Kahramanmaras, 27-year-old Muhammed Habib recited the Quran to rescuers during a 10-hour operation to extricate him.
Video posted on social media showed Habib pumping his fist in the air, yelling "God is greatest", to the cheers of rescuers below as he was finally winched out by machinery.
Aslihan Kavasoglu has spent the last six days camped out with her family in a small building in a park in the Turkish city of Antakya, mourning lost relatives.
Now all she wants to do is to leave her quake-devastated hometown.
"I lost my two sisters, brother and mother in the quake. Most of my family is gone. Save us from here, we don't have anywhere to go. I don't know how we will get out of here," Aslihan told Reuters.
Aslihan, her husband and their three boys fled their home and arrived at the park shortly after the earthquake struck.
Meanwhile, earthquake aid from government-held parts of Syria into opposition-controlled territory has been held up by "approval issues" with one hardline group, a UN spokesperson said.
The hostilities that criss-cross Syria, shattered by nearly 12 years of conflict, are an added challenge for aid workers trying to reach the northern regions affected by the earthquake.
The northwest area, in territory largely held by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Shamhas, has received little assistance as front lines with the government are sealed off and only a single border crossing links it to Türkiye to the north. The Syrian government last week said it was willing to send aid to the northern zone.
A Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) source who was not authorised to talk to the media told Reuters the group would not allow shipments from government-held parts of Syria and that aid would be coming in from Türkiye.
"We won't allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping," the source said.
A spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian aid office told Reuters "there are issues with approval" by the group, which the UN and the United States classify as a terrorist organisation, without giving further information.
A UN spokesperson in Damascus declined to comment, saying the UN "continues to work with relevant parties to have access to the area.
Earlier on Sunday UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said people of north-east Syria had been failed and "rightly feel abandoned".
Cape Times