Children among those pulled from destroyed buildings in Turkey

A father and daughter, a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among survivors pulled from the ruins of collapsed buildings in Turkey on Sunday, nearly a week since a devastating earthquake.

The quake and major aftershocks early last Monday flattened swathes of towns and cities in parts of Turkey and Syria, killing at least 33,000 people in the two countries.

Time was running out to reach trapped victims alive under the rubble, but emergency crews were still finding survivors on Sunday.

Video released by the Istanbul Municipality showed rescuers in the southern province of Hatay pulling a 10-year-old girl through a hole in the floor of a damaged building before carrying her out on a stretcher.

The girl, named Cudi, had been buried for 147 hours, the Istanbul Municipality said.

Also in Hatay, rescuers pulled a small child from the rubble of a collapsed building. A video released by the Turkish health ministry showed the child lying silently on a stretcher, bruised and covered in dust, as rescuers carried her to safety.

In central Hatay, a man and his five-year-old daughter Emira were also recovered alive from a destroyed building.

Video released by the Kocaeli Municipality on Sunday showed rescuers talking to Emira and her father while they were still trapped under debris.

“Hello beautiful girl, we are here to take you out,” one of the rescuers said.

Around 180 km to the north of Hatay, in the city of Kahramanmaras, 27-year-old Muhammed Habib recited the Holy Quran to rescuers during a 10-hour operation to extricate him.

Video posted on social media showed Habib pumping his fist in the air, yelling “God is greatest”, to the cheers of rescuers below as he was finally winched out by machinery.

In the Hatay provincial capital of Antakya, a team of Chinese rescue workers and Turkish firefighters rescued a 54-year-old Syrian man from the rubble of a building near a central park, according to Reuters journalist.

Also in Antakya, a 55-year-old woman was rescued from a collapsed building on Sunday evening. CNN Turk showed rescue workers carrying her to an ambulance as she waved, strapped into a stretcher and wearing a neck brace.

A woman named Saadet Coskun was rescued from a building in the town of Nurdagi in Gaziantep province, 159 hours after the first quake, a live CNN Turk broadcast showed.

Rescue workers called on the crowd on the building’s ruins to open up a channel as they brought the woman through to a waiting ambulance, before bursting into applause.

Her condition was unclear.