17-year-old girl rescued after 10 days under earthquake rubble in Turkey

A 17-year-old girl has been rescued after spending 248 hours under the rubble of the earthquake that hit Turkey last week.

The rescue is the latest in efforts to find survivors after experts had expressed concern over the rapid closure of the survival window.

More than 90 percent of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days.

Belit Tasdemir, United Nations liaison officer at the Search and Rescue Association in Turkey, had said rescue teams, who have been on the ground for several days, were starting to become affected by the cold temperatures and “extreme fatigue”.

“The sheer level of, and how widespread the devastation is, is completely unprecedented in terms of what we’ve seen before in Turkey,” Tasdemir had said.

“We’re approaching the end of the search and rescue window, and plus the probability of finding survivors under the rubble in below-freezing temperatures is becoming a lower probability.”

Anadolu, a state-run Turkish news agency, reports that the 17-year-old girl identified as Aleyna Olmez was rescued from the rubbles of a collapsed apartment in the Kayabasi neighbourhood on Thursday.

Also, a 13-year-old boy was rescued after spending 228 hours under the rubble of a collapsed building while a mother and two children were found in “reasonable condition” despite spending nine days under the rubble, according to rescuers.

Another rescue effort saw a 74-year-old woman pulled out from under the debris.

So far, the death toll from the Turkey-Syria earthquake is nearing 42,000.

Turkish authorities say 36,187 people have been killed in the country while the Syrian government say more than 5,800 people have died.