Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu updated the death toll in Turkey to 39,672, bringing the overall number of earthquake fatalities in both Turkey and Syria to 43,360.
The figure is certain to increase further as search teams retrieve more bodies amid the devastation.
The powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake was the deadliest disaster in Turkey’s modern history.
MORE SURVIVORS RESCUED
Rescuers on Friday removed a survivor from the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne, in hard-hit Hatay province, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck.
Hakan Yasinoğlu, 45, spent 278 hours beneath the rubble, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency. TV footage showed him being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance.
Search teams working overnight also found a woman and two men alive in earthquake wreckage.
The latest rescues came as crews began clearing debris in cities devastated by the earthquake.
Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother of two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras, after being trapped for 258 hours, private DHA news agency reported late Thursday.
In the city of Antakya, police rescue crews found a 12-year-old boy named Osman alive after retrieving 17 bodies from a collapsed building.
“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at the 260th hour,” police rescue team leader Okan Tosun told DHA.
An hour later, crews reached two men inside the debris of a collapsed hospital in Antakya.
One of them, Mustafa Avci, used the mobile phone of a rescuer to call his brother and ask about family members.
“Have they all survived? he asked. “Let me hear their voices.”
AP
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