The footage shows the small kid, who had been trapped from the neck down under rubble since early Monday morning, drinking water from a bottle cap before being rescued.
Nearly 45 hours after the Turkey-Syria earthquake, heart-wrenching video footage shows rescue workers giving a young kid water from a bottle cap before extracting him from the rubble.
The Syrian boy, identified as Muhammed Ahmed, had been buried under rubble since Monday morning, following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, tweeted a video of the difficult-to-watch event.
“Salute, Mohammed. Our search and rescue team recovered Muhammed Ahmed, a Syrian national, from the rubble in Antakya “he added.
The dehydrated toddler drinks from a rescue worker’s bottle cap because he can’t use his arms. After all, he was trapped under rubble from the neck down.
Between sips, he can be heard weeping as he signals for more water.
As the death toll rises above 11,000, expectations of finding additional survivors trapped in the wreckage are diminishing.
In the aftermath of one of the world’s deadliest earthquakes in over a decade, exhausted rescue workers have labored through Turkey and Syria in search of additional signs of life.
Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London Ilan Kelman stated that the window for post-earthquake search-and-rescue operations is “rapidly shrinking.
“Typically, few survivors are rescued after 72 hours. But every life saved is vital, and occasionally people are rescued after many days,” he explained.
“Time is always the adversary, as Turkey and Syria have demonstrated. People perish as a result of immediate medical demands, such as hemorrhaging to death or succumbing to crush injuries. As a result of aftershocks that cause the collapse of fragile structures containing people.”
While waiting for rescue, he noted, many individuals could succumb to hypothermia due to the plunging temperatures or lack of food and water.
The mammoth rescue effort includes over two dozen international search teams and tens of thousands of local emergency responders. While help donations have flooded in from across the globe.
According to retired journalist Ozel Pikal, who witnessed eight dead being rescued from the rubble of a building in the Turkish city of Malatya, the bodies were placed side-by-side on the ground and covered with blankets while rescuers awaited funeral trucks.
As temperatures dropped to -6 degrees Celsius, rescuer Mr. Pikal believes some victims died of hypothermia.
“Today is not a good day since there is no longer any hope in Malatya,” he remarked.
No one will emerge from the ruins alive.
According to him, a hotel structure collapsed in the city, and more than 100 people may be trapped; there is a shortage of rescuers in the area, and the cold has hindered volunteer and government rescue attempts.
Road closures and significant damage in the region have also hindered transportation and access.
Mr. Pikal stated, “Our hands cannot grasp anything because of the cold.” “Work equipment is required.”
