Despite the fact that the boy eventually passed away at a hospital, Turkish state media said Saturday that a couple and their son were rescued alive from under a collapsing apartment building more than 12 days after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated areas of Turkey and Syria.
While sifting through the apartment building’s debris in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, a search team from Kyrgyzstan rescued Samir Muhammed Accar, 49, his wife Ragda, 40, and their 12-year-old son, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
They were removed at approximately 11:30 a.m. local time (8:30 GMT), roughly 296 hours after the earthquake on February 6, and they were swiftly put into ambulances. As the man lay on a stretcher, medics could be seen attaching an IV drip to his arm in television footage.
The squad also discovered two deceased children’s bodies, according to one of the Kyrgyz rescuers. They were also Samir Muhammad and Ragda Accar’s children, Anadolu later reported.
The father was conscious and receiving treatment at Mustafa Kemal University Hospital, according to Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, who was in Antakya, the provincial seat of Hatay. Pictures of Mehmet Oz, an American TV celebrity and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, visiting the patient were published by Anadolu.
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By drinking his own pee, Samir Muhammed Accar was able to survive the ordeal, according to Anadolu’s report on their chat. He also revealed to Oz that he had heard his children reply to his voice for the first two or three days, but that after that, nothing had happened.
One of the hardest damaged regions by the earthquake that left at least 40,642 people dead in Turkey and 5,800 in Syria was Hatay province, which includes Antakya.
Even though the director of the nation’s disaster response agency claimed they would stop on Sunday, search and rescue efforts are still going on in Turkey.
