• A 17-year-old girl was rescued after 248 hours under the rubble of Turkey’s earthquake last week.
• Within the first three days, more than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued.
• The death toll from the Turkey-Syria earthquake has approached 42,000 people.

A 17-year-old girl was rescued after spending 248 hours under the rubble of Turkey’s earthquake last week.

The rescue is the latest in a series of efforts to find survivors after experts expressed concern about the rapidly closing survival window.

Within the first three days, more than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued.

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.”

According to Anadolu, a Turkish state-run news agency, a 17-year-old girl named Aleyna Olmez was rescued from the rubbles of a collapsed apartment in the Kayabasi neighborhood on Thursday.

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

Another rescue effort resulted in the extraction of a 74-year-old woman from beneath the debris.

So far, the death toll from the Turkey-Syria earthquake has approached 42,000 people.

According to Turkish authorities, 36,187 people have been killed in the country, while the Syrian government claims that over 5,800 people have died.

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