Child rescued alive in Turkey four days after deadly earthquake

The girl was pulled out 91 hours after the earthquake

Credit: Turkish Gendarmerie General Command / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Turkish rescuers saved another young girl from a collapsed apartment building in Izmir on Tuesday, four days after a deadly earthquake hit the Aegean region.

Ayda Gezgin was carried to an ambulance wrapped in a space blanket flanked by cheering rescue workers on Tuesday morning, in a scene similar to the day before, when a three-year-old girl was found alive in similar circumstances.

"We have witnessed a miracle in the 91st hour," Izmir mayor Tunc Soyer tweeted. "Rescue teams pulled out four-year-old Ayda alive. Along with the great pain we have experienced, we have this joy as well."

The death toll from Friday’s earthquake has now reached 102, mostly in the Turkish coastal province of Izmir, with two fatalities on the Greek island of Samos.  

The 7.0 magnitude quake also injured 994 people, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), with 147 patients still hospitalised.

Rescue workers carry four-year-old Ayda Gezgin out from a collapsed building, four days after after an earthquake near the Turkish city of Izmir

Credit: AFAD

Rescuers in Izmir are still searching five buildings for an unknown number of missing people, AFAD said.

In the worst-affected Izmir town of Bayrakli, residents experienced jubilation and sorrow on Monday as three-year-old Elif Perinek and 14-year-old Idil Sirin were rescued alive, while each child lost a sibling.

The country has experienced 1,464 aftershocks, including 44 above four in magnitude.

Thousands of Izmir residents are staying in tents following the repeated tremors.

Friday’s earthquake was the deadliest in Turkey since another in the eastern city of Van in 2011 killed about 600 people. A quake in January this year killed 41 people in the eastern province of Elazig.

Turkey is bisected by major fault lines in one of the world’s most active seismic zones. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed more than 17,000 people in the country’s northwest, including 1,000 in the capital Istanbul.