Turkey-Syria earthquake: Boy, nine, pulled out alive after five days underground in arms of his mother
In the wasteland that scars the centre of Kahramanmaras in Turkey, we watched a pair of rescuers perched in a digger’s scoop as they investigated a great pile of concrete.
Their mobile bucket took them up into the sky as they probed a toppled building. No one had checked this spot before.
It is not surprising however.
In Kahramanmaras, more than 200 buildings have been destroyed by the earthquakes and tremors.
“Is anyone in there? If you can hear me tap on the wall,” said a rescuer.
“No, no one.”
Local officials face a difficult dilemma. Tens of thousands have been displaced by the disaster with many now sleeping in plastic tents or self-constructed dwellings on the roadside.
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The climate is harsh, particularly at night, and the authorities need to clear the rubble and begin the process of rebuilding.
But there is a conflicting demand – a moral obligation to search for survivors – and this is a necessarily skilled and time-consuming process.
At what used to be the Elbrar apartment block, we met a multi-national rescue team trying to release a woman called Leyla from deep beneath the pile.
And they’d been working all night to release her.
A multi-national rescue team was involved in the search for Leyla. Pic: AP
We spoke to an Italian rescuer called Gianluca Pesce, an engineer who was volunteering on the site.
“We’ve opened one corridor inside, a corridor (that is) like 50cm square, very small, just enough for one person. I went inside, through the tunnel for about seven metres. We start to call to her, she answered but her voice is weak.”
The rescuers, led by members of Israel’s national search and rescue unit, had spent 24 hours trying to reach her from the side and the top of the building. They had already managed to free the woman’s husband and daughter but Leyla was in a particularly difficult position.
“It’s going to take a long time,” said Mr Pesce.
Sometimes, a rescue is conducted in a matter of few minutes.
While we filmed at the Elbrar building, word spread about another emergency. Just 100 metres from where we were standing, a survivor had been located beneath the remains of an 11-storey block.
More than 200 buildings have been destroyed in Kahramanmaras
An excavator driver called Selmir Gizet told us he had been clearing the pile when he heard a strange sound from the rubble. He decided to raise the alarm.
Shortly afterwards, a man called Gohkan was dragged out of a hole and placed on a stretcher.
Gohkan was pulled out of a hole by rescuers
His feet were blistered and frost-bitten and his face was lacerated – we saw a large indentation on his forehead.
But he was alive, managing to survive more than four days underground.
“God is great” shouted the crowd, “God is great”.
With tears flowing down his cheeks, one rescuer told us: “I had a dream that I would find a man. We worked together as a team and put all efforts into rescuing him. God save him, I hope he survives.”
Back at the Elbrar block, the search and rescuers were looking for Leyla but they told us there had been an important development.
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The search for survivors in the rubble goes on
Leyla’s voice may have belonged to her son – the pair were lying together in the boy’s room when the earthquake struck.
“We were looking for a woman, we know there are a woman and child inside and when we came closer, it became apparent that we were talking to the child,” said search and rescue paramedic, Jonathan Rousso.
“The team have got to the point where they are on the other side of the wall, but they can’t cut (the wall), and there is a washing machine (in the way). You can’t cut through the washing machine. You have to find a way, so we are digging deeper.”
The operation was dangerous, and with frequent tremors their tunnels were at risk of collapse. We saw team members dash into the remains of a local shop, looking for timber and screws to prop up their underground channels.
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Over the course of an agonising evening, rescue team members managed to reach the boy.
He told them his name was Ridvan, Leyla’s nine-year-old son.
A doctor tried to stabilise him down below but there were serious concerns about his condition. The decision was made to get him out.
Ridvan, Leyla’s nine-year-old son, was saved and taken into an ambulance
On the surface, the volunteers called for quiet, for fear of alarming the boy, and Ridvan was carried on a stretcher through a concrete hole. He was greeted to the sound of whispers from the crowd that had grown to several hundred.
He had spent nearly five days underground, in the arms of his mother. He was cold and badly dehydrated and part of his body had been crushed. The paramedics sped him to hospital.
Ridvan pictured in hospital
Unfortunately, his mother Leyla did not survive, the rescue team unable to rescue her in time.
A national catastrophe and a family’s tragedy in a city marked by sorrow.
President Trump has signed an order banning people from 12 countries from entering the US.
He said Sunday’s attack in Colorado had shown “the extreme dangers” of “foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come as temporary visitors and overstay their visas”.
“We will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm,” the president said.
The countries affected are: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The White House said some had a “significant terrorist presence” and accused others of poor screening for dangerous individuals, as well as not accepting deported citizens.
People from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will face partial restrictions.
Mr Trump’s proclamation said America must ensure people entering don’t have “hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” – and don’t support terror groups.
Protests took place when Mr Trump announced his first travel ban in 2017. Pic: Reuters
The move echoes a controversial and chaotic order enacted eight years ago during his first term, when he banned people from predominately Muslim countries.
The countries initially targeted then were Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
President Trump said on Thursday that policy was a “key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil”.
His new list notably removes Syria after Mr Trump met the country’s leader recently on a trip to the Middle East.
Athletes competing in the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics will also be exempt, as will others such as permanent US residents and Afghans with special immigrant visas.
The list was put together after the president asked homeland security officials and the director of national intelligence to compile a report on countries whose citizens could pose a threat.
The ban takes effect from 9 June – but countries could be removed or added.
The proclamation states it will be reviewed within 90 days, and every 180 days after, to decide if it should be “continued, terminated, modified, or supplemented”.
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President Trump’s first travel restrictions in 2017 were criticised by opponents and human rights groups as a “Muslim ban”.
It led to some chaotic scenes, including tourists, students and business travellers prevented from boarding planes – or held at US airports when they landed.
Mr Trump denied it was Islamophobic despite calling for a ban on Muslims entering America in his first presidential campaign.
It faced legal challenges and was modified until the Supreme Court upheld a third version in June 2018, calling it “squarely within the scope of presidential authority”.
Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza “at scale” by Israel to avoid a “generation of children that won’t have a chance in life,” the director of the UN’s World Food Programme has told Sky News.
In early March – before Israel resumed its military operations in the Gaza Strip – all aid was blocked from entering the region.
Despite limited aid now being distributed to Gaza through a US and Israeli-backed organisation, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire near one of the sites.
Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), has urged Israel to allow international aid to “get in and get in at scale”.
“We can’t wait for this,” she told The World with Yalda Hakim. “We need safe, unfettered, clear access all the way in and we’re not getting that right now.”
Ms McCain said people in Gaza were “starving, they’re hungry, they’re doing what they can do to feed their families”.
She added: “It’s very, very important that people realise that the only way to stave off malnutrition, catastrophic food insecurity and, of course, famine would be by complete and total access for organisations like mine.”
Ms McCain said the WFP team was “talking every day” to the Israeli government to try to resume aid deliveries.
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis on Monday. Pic: AP
“We’re not going to give up, we do believe that it’s not only necessary but it’s urgent that we get in and get in at scale,” she said.
“We’re looking at a generation of children that won’t have a chance in life because they haven’t had the proper nutrients.
“Right now, we’re looking at over 500,000 people within Gaza that are catastrophically food insecure.”
Ms McCain added: “I try and put myself in their situation: I’m a mother and grandmother, and I cannot imagine having my children ask me for food and me not being able to give it them.
“I don’t know what that does to a human spirit but I don’t want to see any more of that as a humanitarian aid worker.”
Ms McCain, the widow of the late US presidential candidate John McCain, said she believes in “principled, humanitarian distribution” of aid.
Asked if she thought Hamas was taking aid, she replied: “I have not seen anything like that. I have no way of knowing because I’ve not been there in person.”
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How Israel’s aid plan unravelled
Aid distribution centres in Gaza were closed on Wednesday after Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire near one of its sites.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – which is endorsed by Israel – said the centres would be shut “for renovations, organisation, and efficiency improvements”. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) warned nearby roads would be considered “combat zones”.
It came after 27 Palestinians were killed while waiting for aid to be distributed in the Rafah area of southern Gaza on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The IDF said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots, about half a kilometre from the aid distribution site of the GHF. It denied shooting at civilians at the aid centre.
Read more:
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That incident came two days after reports that 31 people were killed as they walked to a distribution centre run by the GHF in the Rafah area.
However the IDF said its forces “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false”.
It’s only been ten days since Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin crazy following a series of Russian attacks on Ukraine.
But now the attacks have been flowing in the opposite direction, it feels like the Russian president has seen an opportunity to win back Washington’s affections.
It involves playing the victim.
Ukraine war latest: Putin wants revenge for airbase attacks, says Trump
The Kremlin, for example, said the leaders’ call was focussed on Ukrainian attacks “on Russian civilians”.
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Ukraine drone attack: new video analysed
Putin accused Ukraine of relying on ‘terror’. Pic: Reuters
And before it, Putin accused Ukraine’s leadership of being a “terrorist organisation”, in his first comments since the spate of assaults began.
He was referring to Saturday’s bombing of a highway bridge in the Bryansk region, which left seven dead and dozens injured after part of a passenger train was crushed.
No one has claimed responsibility but Russia blames Ukraine.
“The current Kyiv regime does not need peace at all,” said President Putin.
“What is there to talk about? How can we negotiate with those who rely on terror?”
It’s exactly what Ukraine has been saying about Russia for the last three years, but there was no mention of that. The Kremlin is in full-on victim mode.
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Will Putin go nuclear?
The aim, I think, is to turn the tables on Ukraine, cast itself as the injured party and make Donald Trump believe that Russia has a right to respond to the drone attack on its long-range bombers.
The tactic may well have worked.
“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Trump wrote on social media after the call.
Did he try to talk Putin out of responding? We don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like it. If anything, Trump actually announced Russia’s retaliation himself.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more:
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And even though Putin discussed the drone attack with Trump, he still hasn’t commented on it in public – four days on.
Russia wants to be seen as the victim, but it doesn’t want to look weak, so an embarrassing episode like that is kept out of the headlines.
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