dpa, Berlin
ISTANBUL — A 3-year-old girl was rescued from the rubble 65 hours after a deadly earthquake rocked Turkey’s western coast as the death toll climbed to 83 on Monday.
Rescue workers performed the delicate task of extricating the girl, Elif, from the rubble of an apartment building in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir, disaster management agency AFAD said, three days after a massive tremor centred in the Aegean Sea hit both Turkey and Greece.
The toll had risen to 83, said Environmental and Urban Planning Minister Murat Kurum, with more bodies recovered in the country’s third-largest city.
Two teenagers also died on the Greek island of Samos, according to media reports, after the quake that hit Turkey’s Aegean coast and Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
Elif’s rescue was shown on television, with her being carried to a hospital tent.
“I’m very happy. May God reward them [the rescue workers],” her grandmother told journalists. Elif’s mother and three siblings were rescued from a collapsed eight-story building after 23 hours on Saturday.
AFAD tweeted that Idil, 14, was saved after being trapped for 58 hours.
Turkey lies on major fault lines and has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past, including one in the north-west in 1999 that killed more than 17,000 people.
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