3-year-old rescued 91 hours after Turkey earthquake

IZMIR – A three-year-old girl was rescued alive from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building on Tuesday in Turkish city of Izmir, four days after a strong earthquake destroyed over a dozen buildings in the city. 

“God is great!” rescue officials and onlookers chanted when the child was being shifted to hospital after being wrapped in a thermal blanket. 

The little girl, whos has been identified as Ayda Gezgin by Turkish officials, was trapped under the rubble for 91 hours.  

As she was rescued, she called out for her mother, who lost her life in the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. 

However, her brother and father are safe as they were not present in the building when it collapsed. 

A rescuer named Nusret Aksoy, the first who heard the voice of the girl from the debris, said that he was sifting through the rubble of the toppled building when he heard a scream of the child.  

The team later located the exact location of the girl and recovered her. Ayda’s rescue comes a day after another 3-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl were also pulled out alive from debris of collapsed buildings in Izmir. 

Meanwhile, the death toll in the earthquake reached 111, after emergency crews retrieved more bodies from the rubble in the city. 

The US Geological Survey registered the intensity of quake at 7.0, while other agencies reported less severity.

The quake also hit the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, killing two teenagers and injuring 20 people.