IZMIR, TURKEY: Rescuers in the Turkish city of Izmir pulled a young girl out alive from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building Tuesday, four days after a strong earthquake hit Turkey and Greece and as hopes of reaching survivors began to fade.
Wrapped in a thermal blanket, the girl was taken into an ambulance on a stretcher to the sounds of applause and chants of “God is great!" from rescue workers and onlookers.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca identified her as 3-year-old Ayda Gezgin on Twitter. The child had been trapped inside the rubble for 91 hours since Friday's quake struck in the Aegean Sea and was the 107th person to have been pulled out of collapsed buildings alive.
After she was pulled from the rubble, little Ayda called out for her mother, in video of the rescue broadcast on television.
But Ayda's mother did not survive. Her body was found amid the wreckage hours later. Her brother and father were not inside the building at the time of the quake.
Rescuer Nusret Aksoy told reporters that he was sifting through the rubble of the toppled eight-floor building when he heard a child's scream and called for silence. He later located the girl in a tight space next to a dishwasher.
The girl waved at him, told him her name and said that she was okay, Aksoy said.
“I got goosebumps and my colleague Ahmet cried,” he told HaberTurk television.
Ibrahim Topal, of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH said: “My colleague and I looked at each other like ‘Did you hear that, too?’ We listened again. There was a very weak voice saying something like ‘I’m here.’ Then we shut everything down, the machines, and started listening again. And there really was a voice.”
Health ministry officials said the girl was in good condition but would be kept under observation in the hospital for a while. She asked for for meatballs and a yoghurt drink on her way to the hospital, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Her rescue came a day after another 3-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl were also pulled out alive from collapsed buildings in Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city.
Meanwhile, the death toll in the earthquake climbed to 111, after emergency crews retrieved more bodies from toppled buildings in the city. Officials said 138 quake survivors were still hospitalized, and three of them were in serious condition.
The U.S. Geological Survey registered the quake’s magnitude at 7.0, though other agencies recorded it as less severe.
The vast majority of the deaths and some 1,000 injuries occurred in Izmir. Two teenagers also died and 19 people were injured on the Greek island of Samos, near the quake’s epicenter in the Aegean Sea.
The quake also triggered a small tsunami that hit Samos and the Seferihisar district of Izmir province, where one elderly woman drowned. The tremors were felt across western Turkey, including in Istanbul, as well as in the Greek capital of Athens. Hundreds of aftershocks followed.
In Izmir, the quake reduced buildings to rubble or saw floors pancake in on themselves and authorities detained nine people, including contractors, for questioning over the collapse of six of the buildings.
Turkey has a mix of older buildings and cheap or illegal constructions that do not withstand earthquakes well. Regulations have been tightened to strengthen or demolish older buildings, and urban renewal is underway in Turkish cities, but experts say it is not happening fast enough.
The country sits on top of two major fault lines and earthquakes are frequent.
Turkish rescuers pull girl from rubble 4 days after quake
https://arab.news/mbrse
Turkish rescuers pull girl from rubble 4 days after quake
- The girl was taken into an ambulance on a stretcher to the sounds of applause and chants from rescue workers
- The child had been trapped inside the rubble for 91 hours since Friday's quake
Shooter kills 9 at Canadian school and residence
- The shooter was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound
- A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries
TORONTO: A shooter killed nine people and wounded dozens more at a secondary school and a residence in a remote part of western Canada on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s history.
The suspect, described by police in an initial emergency alert as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
The attack occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a picturesque mountain valley town in the foothills of the Rockies.
A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “devastated” by the “horrific acts of violence” and announced he was suspending plans to travel to the Munich Security Conference on Wednesday, where he had been set to hold talks with allies on transatlantic defense readiness.
Police said an alert was issued about an active shooter at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday afternoon.
As police searched the school, they found six people shot dead. A seventh person with a gunshot wound died en route to hospital.
Separately, police found two more bodies at a residence in the town.
The residence is “believed to be connected to the incident,” police said.
At the school, “an individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self?inflicted injury,” police said.
Police have not yet released any information about the age of the shooter or the victims.
“We are devastated by the loss of life and the profound impact this tragedy has had on families, students, staff, and our entire town,” the municipality of Tumbler Ridge said in a statement.
Tumbler Ridge student Darian Quist told public broadcaster CBC that he was in his mechanics class when there was an announcement that the school was in lockdown.
He said that initially he “didn’t think anything was going on,” but started receiving “disturbing” photos about the carnage.
“It set in what was happening,” Quist said.
He said he stayed in lockdown for more than two hours until police stormed in, ordering everyone to put their hands up before escorting them out of the school.
Trent Ernst, a local journalist and a former substitute teacher at Tumbler Ridge, expressed shock over the shooting at the school, where one of his children has just graduated.
He noted that school shootings have been a rarity occurring every few years in Canada compared with the United States, where they are far more frequent.
“I used to kind of go: ‘Look at Canada, look at who we are.’ But then that one school shooting every 2.5 years happens in your town and things... just go off the rails,” he told AFP.
‘Heartbreak’
While mass shootings are extremely rare in Canada, last April, a vehicle attack that targeted a Filipino cultural festival in Vancouver killed 11 people.
British Columbia Premier David Eby called the latest violence “unimaginable.”
Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s minister of public safety, said it was “one of the worst mass shootings in our province’s and country’s history.”
The Canadian Olympic Committee, whose athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Games in Italy, said Wednesday it was “heartbroken by the news of the horrific school shooting.”
Ken Floyd, commander of the police’s northern district, said: “This has been an incredibly difficult and emotional day for our community, and we are grateful for the cooperation shown as officers continue their work to advance the investigation.”
Floyd told reporters the shooter was the same suspect police described as “female” in a prior emergency alert to community members, but declined to provide any details on the suspect’s identity.
The police said officers were searching other homes and properties in the community to see if there were additional sites connected to the incident.
Tumbler Ridge, a quiet town with roughly 2,400 residents, is more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) north of Vancouver, British Columbia’s largest city.
“There are no words sufficient for the heartbreak our community is experiencing tonight,” the municipality said.
