198 Hours Buried in Earthquake Ruins, Three Turkish Residents Successfully Saved

Search for the New Turkish earthquake. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA/Onur Erdogan)

JAKARTA - An 18-year-old youth named Muhammed Cafer was rescued from the rubble of a building in southern Turkey on Tuesday, his third rescue in the morning, some 198 hours after last week's devastating earthquake, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that shook Turkey last Monday, followed by aftershocks of no less magnitude, has killed more than 36,000 people in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria, according to an official tally, with this increase expected to be much higher.

In Turkey's Adiyman province, rescue workers carried Cafer on a stretcher, an oxygen mask on his face and a health worker holding an IV, from the site of a collapsed building to a waiting ambulance.

Cafer was seen moving his fingers as he was pulled away by rescuers.

Moments earlier, rescue workers pulled two brothers alive from the rubble of an apartment block in the neighbouring province of Kahramanmaras.

Meanwhile, the state-run Anadolu news agency identified them as 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his brother, 21-year-old Baki Yeninar, who were rescued later.

They were both placed in an ambulance and taken to a hospital, but their current condition is unknown.