GAZIANTEP: A third cargo plane loaded with relief supplies from Saudi Arabia arrived at Gaziantep Airport in Turkiye on Friday, carrying 104.6 tons of items including foodstuff, tents, blankets, rugs, and shelter bags, as well as medical supplies, following the directives of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The relief flight is part of the Saudi Aid Bridge project implemented by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center to help victims of the recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkiye.
Meanwhile, rescuers pulled several people alive from the shattered remnants of buildings on Friday, some who survived more than 100 hours trapped under crushed concrete in the bitter cold.
The survivors included six relatives who huddled in a small pocket under the rubble, a teenager who drank his own urine to slake his thirst, and a four-year-old boy offered a jellybean to calm him down as he was shimmied out.
But the flurry of dramatic rescues — some broadcast live on Turkish television — could not obscure the overwhelming devastation of what Turkiye’s president called one of the greatest disasters in his nation’s history.
Entire neighborhoods of high-rise buildings have been reduced to twisted metal, pulverized concrete and exposed wires, and the magnitude 7.8 quake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies undoubtedly yet to be recovered and counted.
