Turkey-Syria earthquake: Newborn baby, family of six and married couple among those saved from beneath rubble
A newborn baby and a family of six are among those to defy the odds and be pulled alive from the rubble in Turkey days after the devastating earthquake.
The rescues come as hopes fade of finding more survivors following Monday’s 7.8 magnitude tremor, in the face of freezing temperatures.
Earthquake latest – Turkey refuses aid from Cyprus
Stories have been emerging of extraordinary human resilience in the face of adversity.
Family of six survives 101 hours under rubble
A woman and her family survived by huddling together in an air pocket
A husband, wife and their four children were rescued after spending 101 hours trapped beneath the debris.
The family managed to survive by huddling together in a small air pocket beneath a collapsed building in Iskenderun, Hatay province.
The tower block was only 600ft from the Mediterranean and the earthquake caused the sea to rise and flood the city centre to within feet of where they were trapped.
Newborn baby rescued
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10-day-old baby rescued after 90 hours
A 10-day-old baby was pulled from the rubble along with her mother 90 hours after catastrophe struck.
The infant, named as Yagiz Ulas, was found by search and rescue teams in Hatay province, according to officials.
Married couple saved
There was relief as Haci Murat Kilinc and his wife, Raziye, were freed. Pic: AP
Rescue workers wept with relief as a married couple who spent 109 hours buried within a small crevice in the rubble were freed.
There were shouts of “God is great” as Haci Murat Kilinc and his wife, Raziye, were carried through a crowd on stretchers to a waiting ambulance in Iskenderun.
One rescue worker said Mr Kilinc had joked with the search team while still trapped beneath the rubble, trying to boost their morale.
He also requested cigarettes and tea while still buried, but had to be refused.
Joy as teenager found
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Tears as teen rescued after 94 hours
Near the epicentre of the quake in the city of Gaziantep, emergency workers rescued Adnan Muhammed Korkut from the basement where had been trapped since the quake.
Trapped for 94 hours, the 17-year-old said he had been forced to drink his own urine to survive.
He smiled at the crowd of friends and relatives who cried tears of joy as he was carried out and placed on a stretcher.
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“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was put into an ambulance.
“Thank you everyone.”
A rescue worker called Yasemin, told him: “I have a son just like you.
“I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. I swear I did not sleep; I was trying to get you out.”
Dramatic rescues
Rescuers saved 20-year-old Ibrahim Kantrji, in Kahramanmaras
Dramatic rescues were also reported elsewhere, including in the city of Antakya, where crews saved a 10-year-old girl.
Search teams also found a 20-year-old survivor Ibrahim Kantrji in Kahramanmaras, while Eyup Ak, 60, was pulled to safety in Adiyaman, 104 hours after the earthquake.
Eyup Ak, 60, was trapped for 104 hours. Pic:AP
‘Disaster of the century’
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called it “the disaster of the century”.
With morgues and cemeteries overwhelmed, dead bodies lie wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarpaulins in the streets of some cities.
The Turkish authorities said more than 19,000 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with nearly 75,000 injured.
Some 3,384 have been confirmed killed on the other side of the border in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to more than 22,000.
The total outstrips the more than 18,400 who died in the 2011 earthquake off Fukushima, Japan, that triggered a tsunami and the estimated 18,000 people who died in a tremor near Istanbul in 1999.
‘They’ll die from the cold’
Meanwhile, in the city of Antakya, people scrambled for supplies being distributed from a lorry.
One survivor, Ahmet Tokgoz, called for the government to evacuate people from the region.
He said: “Especially in this cold, it is not possible to live here.
“If people haven’t died from being stuck under the rubble, they’ll die from the cold.”
The winter weather and damage to roads and airports have hampered the rescue effort.
The Turkish government has been criticised for being too slow to respond.
There will be a special programme called Disaster Zone: The Turkey-Syria Earthquake on Sky News on Friday evening at 9.30pm
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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