“How is my mother?” asks man rescued after 11 days in Turkey

“How is my mother and everyone doing?” asks the man on the gurney, speaking calmly into his cell phone. Crying in disbelief, his friend replies, “Everyone is fine, everyone is waiting for you, I am coming to you.”

This was the exchange of emotions that followed the rescue of 33-year-old Mustafa Avci from the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province in southern Turkey, 261 hours after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck region on February 6.

On Friday, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video showing the phone call between Avci and his friend, in a powerful reminder that even now, 11 days after the earthquake, survivors can still be found. against all odds.

Avci’s rescue on Thursday night came as the death toll in Turkey and Syria rose to at least 43,885 people, according to official figures.

In the video, Avci can be seen wearing a neck brace and looks wide-eyed and hopeful as she asks, “Did everyone get away okay? Let me hear your voices for a moment.”

Your friend sobs again: “I’m driving. I’m coming to you. Brother, I’m going.”

Avci then kisses the hand of the rescuer who is holding the phone and thanks him. “May God be a thousand times happy with you,” he says.

Koca, the minister, said Avci and a second man, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, were rescued from the ruins of a private hospital. Sakiroglu was in the hospital for a checkup when the earthquake hit, his father told CNN.

The two men were found when a rescue team spotted a leg dangling from a pile of rubble after a machine operator had cleared debris from the surface.

The men were taken to Hatay’s makeshift hospital for treatment, the health minister said. “These are remarkable stories and people rise to their feet in these situations,” he said.

The rescue of the two men follows that of a 13-year-old boy named Mustafa in Antakya, Hatay province, on Wednesday (15), 228 hours after the earthquake.

Mustafa’s survival was “certainly a miracle,” rescuer Özer Aydinli told Gupta in an interview on Thursday.

Aydinli said he thought his fellow rescuers were “hallucinating” and assumed the boy “died with his eyes open”. But the boy shouted: “Brother! I don’t feel my legs. Save me!”

A team of more than 70 people rushed to help.

“Even now, every now and then tears come to our eyes,” said Aydinli, referring to the boy’s rescue. “He is very well and conscious. I hope he gets better. “

“People have been through hell”

Rescue teams are still trying to access hard-to-reach areas in Turkey and Syria, but the number of people found alive is dwindling.

Meanwhile, as donations pour in from around the world, many survivors have been left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures and without access to basic needs.

“Many lives were saved, many people were rescued from the rubble by their neighbors, their friends, their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. Frontline health workers have done an incredible job in both countries,” World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies director Mike Ryan told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday.

The WHO said it was particularly concerned about people in northwest Syria, a rebel-held region with little access to aid.

The United Nations health agency said it had asked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to open more border crossings with Turkey to allow aid in.

“It is clear that the area of ​​greatest concern at the moment is the northwest area of ​​Syria,” Ryan said.

Aid delivery to Syria has been limited by restrictions on the cross-border mechanism agreed by a 2014 UN Security Council resolution to allow aid to pass through four points on the Turkish-Syrian border.

“The impact of the earthquake on government-controlled areas of Syria is significant, but the services are there and there is access to these people,” Ryan said.

“We have to remember here that in Syria we had 10 years of war. The healthcare system is incredibly fragile. People have been through hell.”