ISTANBUL. The 12-year-old boy extracted alive with his parents died in hospital 296 hours after the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday 6 February. A foreign search team from Kyrgyzstan had rescued Samir Muhammed Accar, 49, his wife Ragda, 40, and their 12-year-old son as they dug through the building’s rubble in the southern Turkish city of Antakya. Once rescued they were rushed to hospital. Television footage shows doctors attaching an IV to the man’s arm as he lies on a stretcher. One of the rescuers said the team also found the bodies of two dead children. Anadolu later reported that they were other children of the rescued couple.
The phase of relief is now practically finished. The hopes of finding someone still alive under the rubble are reduced to a flicker.