Rescue efforts continue in Turkey following February 6 deadly earthquake that killed more than 24,000 people.
Among those rescued on February 11 were a family of five pulled from the rubble in Turkey’s Gaziantep province.
AP news agency reported the parents, two daughters and son were brought to safety after five days under their collapsed home, to cries of “God is great”.
The same outlet reported that a seven-year-old girl was pulled from the debris in the province of Hatay after almost 132 hours under the rubble.
Another remarkable rescue of two sisters in Antakya, southern Turkey, took place on February 8.
The quake was described as the “worst event in 100 years in this region” by the United Nations aid chief, who was in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras on February 11.
The border crossing between long-feuding Armenia and Turkey reopened on the same day for the first time in 35 years to allow aid through.
And there are reports that the Syrian government has agreed to let UN aid into areas controlled by opposition groups, with whom they have been engaged in a bitter civil war since 2011.
The death toll in Syria from the earthquake now stands at more than 3,500, according to AFP – but new figures have not been publishes since February 10.
There has been criticism that the international effort to send aid to Syria has not been fast enough.
Sivanka Dhanapala, the Syria representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told AlJazeera that as many 5.3 million Syrians may be homeless following the quake.
The two deceased have not been named but police said that both victims were tourists – a 22-year-old from Sweden and a 39-year-old from Turkey.
They died after they were crushed by debris from either a collapsed wall or an old building, police said.
Dozens more were injured when buildings collapsed, some of them suffering broken bones with a number in serious condition, Kos regional government official Giorgos Halkidios said.
The Greek army is supporting the emergency services with the rescue operation, he added.
Image source Wikimedia
Kos was nearest to the epicenter of the quake and appeared to be the worst hit, with damage caused to a number of older buildings, including cracked walls and smashed windows.
The mayor said the buildings that suffered the most damage were built before “earthquake building codes” were introduced.
“The rest of the island has no problem. It’s only the main town that has a problem,” Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis said.
The roof of a bar on the island also collapsed, and a ferry was unable to dock due to damage at the harbor, Greek police said.
Tourists later gathered outside terminal buildings at Kos airport having left their hotels and apartments.
In Turkey, pictures shared on social media showed people in the city of Bodrum walking with water lapping their ankles and localized flooding, and about 80 people sought hospital treatment for minor injuries.
Others described waking in the night after being violently shaken in their beds.
Residents fled their homes and tourists ran from holiday apartments with pillows and blankets. Some sustained injuries after jumping from windows in panic, Turkish broadcaster NTV said.
At a hospital in Bodrum, the wounded were being treated in the garden as a precaution after the quake caused slight damage to parts of the hospital ceiling, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The earthquake also triggered high waves off Gumbet, a resort town near Bodrum, which flooded roads and left parked cars stranded, Turkish media report. There were no reports of casualties.
Turkey and Greece sit on significant fault lines and are regularly hit by earthquakes.
One of the deadliest in recent years hit the heavily populated northwest of Turkey, in 1999, killing some 17,000 people.
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