Mesut Hancer holds the hand of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak, who died in the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake’s epicenter, the day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s southeast, on February 7, 2023. -AFP
ANTAKYA — Heartrending scenes of a newborn plucked alive from the rubble and a broken father clutching his dead daughter’s hand have laid bare the human cost of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey that by Thursday had claimed over 15,000 lives.
For three days and nights since the 7.8 magnitude quake an impromptu army of rescuers have worked in freezing temperatures to find those still entombed among ruins in several cities either side of the border.
The World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that time is running out for the thousands injured and those still feared trapped.
For Mesut Hancer, a resident of the Turkish city Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter, it is already too late.
He sat on the freezing rubble, too grief-stricken to speak, refusing to let go of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak’s hand as her body lay lifeless among the slabs of concrete and strands of twisted rebar.
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