Mexico has sent its search and rescue dogs to Turkey as part of a contingent to help search for survivors following devastating earthquakes.
Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday (February 6).
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, according to Sky News.
Mexico has now dispatched some of its renowned search and rescue dogs to Turkey to help look for people buried under rubble.
Check out the dogs below:According to Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary, a plane with 16 dogs and their handlers took off from Mexico City earlier on Tuesday (February 7), as reported by CNN.
"The heart of our rescue team is currently flying to Turkey," Ebrard said and a government press release obtained by the outlet wrote that search and rescue experts from the army, members of the navy, and "five foreign ministry officials and 15 members of the Red Cross" were also onboard.
Ebrard also shared a video of the canine team - which included Belgian Malinois, Australian Sheepdogs, and Labradors - and posted clips of members of the Mexican Red Cross and their dogs.
The country is prone to natural disasters and has specialized civilian and military teams to assist when earthquakes strike. The same dogs being sent to Turkey won the hearts of Mexicans during the country's 2017 tremor.
Back then, a yellow Labrador Retriever named Frida earned international stardom after footage was posted of her searching for survivors in the city wearing protective goggles and boots. The navy said that she saved 12 lives and located 40 bodies in operations across Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala, and Ecuador, as noted by BBC.
Before she retired and died of old age in November last year, Frida triumphantly rescued 43 people over the course of her service which lasted from 2010 to 2019.
The heroic rescue team will land in an airport in the Turkish city of Adana, a southern city near the center of the earthquake, according to a statement cited by the publication.
The Latin American nation is not the only country sending canines to help with the rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria as the Czech Republic, Germany, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Switzerland, Libya, the UK, and the US are all also deploying dogs with their handlers.
The animals are often employed in locations where the use of hefty machinery could compel the rubble to tumble and put the lives of survivors at risk. They are also instructed to sniff out humans and alert their handlers by barking, and mark the ground where the scent is strongest.
Mexican officials say their aim is "to save lives" and hope that the deployment of the dogs and rescue team will result in more lives saved rather than losses.