Rescuers pulled a two-week-old baby girl alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block on Tuesday as they battled to find survivors from a earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed at least 432 people and left thousands homeless.
The baby's mother and a grandmother were also brought out alive on stretchers to jubilant cries from onlookers who followed the dramatic rescue under cold, pouring rain. "It's a miracle!", said Senol Yigit, the uncle of the baby, Azra, whose name means "purity" or "untouched" in Arabic. "I'm so happy. What can I say. We have been waiting for two days. We had lost hope when we first saw the building," he said sobbing.
However, hope of finding more people alive under tonnes of rubble faded with every passing hour as rescuers pulled out more bodies. The death toll from the 7.2-magnitude quake rose to 432, from an earlier 366, the Disaster and Emergency Administration said. The final count was likely to rise further as many people were still missing and 2,262 buildings had collapsed.
Thousands slept for a second night in crowded tents or huddled around fires and in cars across a region rattled by aftershocks in Van province, near the Iranian border. The centre of Van, a city of one million, resembled a ghost town, and in the hard-hit town of Ercis thousands of people roamed the streets. The Turkish Red Crescent has said it is preparing temporary shelter for about 40,000 people, although there are no reliable figures for the homeless.
Many residents spent the night outside fearing any return to their damaged homes. Officials said 12,000 more tents would reach Van on Tuesday after complaints that entire families were cramming into tents. Authorities have been criticised for failing to ensure that some of the neediest, particularly in villages, received tents as night temperatures plummeted.
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