Earthquake Death Toll in Turkey, Syria Exceeds 42,000, Some Still Pulled Alive From Rubble
A teenage girl was rescued alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey on Thursday, more than 10 days after the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake and its powerful aftershocks struck Turkey and Syria. The miraculous rescue of the girl, and of a 77-year-old woman as well as a mother and her two young children the day before come as the death toll in the cataclysmic event passed 42,000. Rescue teams said Wednesday they still heard the voices of survivors under the rubble
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg is scheduled to visit areas affected by the earthquakes in Turkey on Thursday.
Meanwhile, thousands of Syrian refugees who had fled to Turkey during the country’s ongoing civil war lined up at border crossings on Wednesday to return to home for temporary visits. The rush to the border came after an announcement on social media by Syrian officials at a main border crossing that Turkey would allow them to leave for three to six months and then return, the New York Time reported.
As of Thursday, 119 United Nations trucks carrying aid such as food, essential medicine, tents and other shelter items and cholera testing kits, had gone through the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings since the earthquake, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
