A family of six has been rescued after being buried under rubble in Turkey for 101 hours after the devastating earthquake.
Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday morning (February 6) at 04:17 AM local time, with a 6.7 magnitude aftershock being felt 11 minutes later.
Survivors whose homes have been destroyed have taken refuge in stadiums, mosques, shopping malls, and community centers, while about 1,500 people are living in emergency tents in Sanliurfa - one of the cities hit hardest by the disaster, per Sky News.
The tragedy has become the deadliest quake in over a decade after a 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan took the lives of almost 20,000 people. Now, Turkey and Syria are undergoing the results of a major quake on a similar scale, with the death toll steadily increasing.
The country has been searching for bodies of civilians under rubble for the past few days, with even Mexico dispatching some of its renowned search and rescue dogs to help look for people buried under rubble.
According to the outlet, six members of the same family have now been saved after spending over 100 hours trapped under debris in Turkey following the unfortunate disaster.
Miraculously, the family managed to survive by crowding together in a small air pocket beneath a collapsed building in Iskenderun, Hatay province.
This follows an earlier report by Sky News of how rescuers found Adnan Muhammed Korkut alive from underneath the remnants in the city of Gaziantep.
It was stated that the 17-year-old beamed at the crowd of emotional friends and relatives as he was carried out and placed on a stretcher. He was trapped for 94 hours and said that he had been forced to drink his own urine to survive.
A rescue worker called Yasemin told the young boy: "I have a son just like you. I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. I swear I did not sleep; I was trying to get you out."
As well as the increasing number of dead people, tens of thousands of others have been injured, and more are left homeless. In the city of Antakya, people ran for supplies being dispersed from a lorry.
One survivor, Ahmet Tokgoz, asked the government to vacate people from the region and said: "Especially in this cold, it is not possible to live here. If people haven't died from being stuck under the rubble, they'll die from the cold," per Sky News.
In the wake of the traumatic disaster, hundreds of human rights groups, NGOs, and crisis relief organizations (among others) have rallied together to help those affected in the region.
Our thoughts go out to all the lives lost in this tragedy.
