3-year-old girl rescued from collapsed building days after Turkey earthquake

IZMIR, Turkey — Days after a powerful earthquake in the Aegean Sea shook Turkey and Greece, rescuers pulled a 3-year-old girl out from the debris of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Izmir, according to officials and multiple reports.

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Turkish authorities posted video of the rescue Monday on social media. The girl, identified as Elif Perincek, was pulled from the wreckage 65 hours after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook the region, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) and the U.S. Geological Survey.

“God, thank you a thousand times,” AFAD director Mehmet Gulluoglu wrote in a Twitter post.

Firefighter Muammer Celik told The Associated Press that he found Elif lying on her back in the small space between her bed and a closet.

“At first, I was very upset,” he said. “Then I stretched out my hand to clean her face and she grabbed my thumb. … I froze because right before that moment, I had asked my team for a blanket and a body bag.”

He called the discovery that Elif was alive “a firefighter’s joy.”

Video posted online by Turkey’s health minister, Fahrettin Altun, showed Elif recovering Monday after being taken to a hospital. In a post on Twitter, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wished Elif and other children injured by the earthquake speedy recoveries.

Elif’s mother and two of her siblings were pulled from the rubble of their apartment building in the Bayrakli neighborhood on Saturday, The New York Times reported. One other sibling did not survive the temblor, according to the newspaper.

At least 1,225 aftershocks have been recorded since Friday’s earthquake, which has claimed at least 85 lives and injured nearly 1,000 people in Turkey. On Monday, officials said nearly 8,000 search-and-rescue personnel and 25 search-and-rescue dogs were looking for survivors.

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Deadly earthquake shakes Greece, Turkey, destroying buildings People walk past a destroyed house after an earthquake in the Greek island of Samos on October 30, 2020. (STR/Eurokinissi/AFP via Getty Images)

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