A three-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building in the western Turkish city of Izmir on Monday, officials said, nearly three days after a powerful earthquake in the Aegean Sea region which has killed 85 people. Rescue efforts were continuing in eight buildings in Izmir where 83 people were killed, making Friday’s earthquake the deadliest in Turkey for nearly a decade. Two teenagers died on the Greek island of Samos, authorities said. Television footage showed the girl, Elif Perincek, being pulled from the rubble and carried by rescuers on a stretcher to an ambulance, 65 hours after the earthquake struck. Elif’s two sisters and brother were rescued along with their mother on Saturday, but one of the children subsequently died. “A thousand thanks to you, my God. We have brought out our little one Elif from the apartment block,” Mehmet Gulluoglu, head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), wrote on Twitter. Seven hours earlier, rescuers clapped in unison as 14-year-old Idil Sirin was removed from the rubble, after being trapped for some 58 hours. Her eight-year-old sister, Ipek, did not survive, NTV television reported. More than 3,500 tents and 13,000 beds have been supplied to provide temporary shelter, according to AFAD, which said 962 people had been injured in Friday’s earthquake. Turkey quake toll hits 60, man rescued from rubble after 33 hours More than 740 victims have so far been discharged from hospitals, AFAD said. It was the deadliest earthquake in Turkey since one in the eastern city of Van in 2011 which killed more than 500 people. A quake in January this year killed 41 people in the eastern province of Elazig. Greek Prime Minster Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to offer his condolences for the “tragic loss of life from the earthquake that struck both our countries”, the Greek premier said in a Twitter post. “Whatever our differences, these are times when our people need to stand together.” The two countries have for weeks been involved in heated disputes over Turkish energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean and the divided island of Cyprus. Turkey lies in one of the world’s most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people. Reuters, Associated Press and Bloomberg
