A man pulled out from the rubble in Turkey overnight Thursday not only survived being buried 261 hours after the powerful 7.8 earthquake struck but soon was meeting his 12-day-old baby.
As he was being rushed to the hospital on a stretcher, Mustafa Avci is seen speaking on a cellphone in a video released by the Turkish Health Ministry. He had one pressing question: How was his family?
“Have they all survived?" he asks, according to The Associated Press. “Let me hear their voices.”
Avci's face brightens as he is given good news and he kisses the hand of one of his rescuers.
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He was put on a video call with his parents who showed him his newborn baby, Reuters reported.
"I had completely lost all hope" his father said. "This is a true miracle. They gave me my son back. I saw the wreckage and I thought nobody could be saved alive from there."
Avci was one of two men pulled from a collapsed hospital in Antakya overnight Thursday. Also rescued were a 12-year-old boy in Antakya and a mother of two from a building in Kahramanmaras.
The Turkish disaster management agency updated the death toll to 38,044, bringing the number of fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 41,732, the AP reported. The death toll is certain to increase further as search teams retrieve more bodies amid the devastation.
