Infant pulled safely from rubble

ERCIS, Turkey – After 48 hours, a miracle emerged from the rubble: a 2-week-old baby girl brought out half-naked but alive from the wreckage of an apartment building toppled by Turkey’s devastating earthquake.

Rescue workers erupted in cheers and applause Tuesday at sight of the infant – and again hours later when her mother and grandmother were pulled out, their survival a ray of joy on an otherwise grim day.

The death toll from Sunday’s 7.2-magnitude quake climbed to at least 459 as desperate survivors fought over aid and blocked aid shipments. A powerful aftershock ignited widespread panic that turned into a prison riot in a nearby provincial city.

With thousands of quake survivors facing a third night out in the open in near-freezing temperatures, Turkey set aside its national pride and said it would accept international aid offers.

Tuesday’s dramatic rescue of three generations of one family was all the more remarkable because the infant, Azra Karaduman, was declared healthy after being flown to a hospital in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

Television footage showed rescuer Kadir Direk in an orange jumpsuit wriggling into a narrow slit in the pile of concrete and metal, then sliding back out with Azra.

“Praise be!” someone shouted. “Get out of the way!” another yelled as the aid team and bystanders cleared a path to a waiting ambulance.

“Bringing them out is such happiness. I wouldn’t be happier if they gave me tons of money,” said rescuer Oytun Gulpinar.

More good news came early today when the Anatolia news agency reported that an 18-year-old university student had been pulled out injured but alive from the ruins of an apartment building,

The pockets of jubilation were tempered by many more discoveries of bodies by thousands of aid workers in the worst-hit city of Ercis and other communities in eastern Turkey devastated by the earthquake.

Some 2,000 buildings collapsed, but the fact that the quake hit in daytime, when many people were out of their homes, averted an even worse disaster. Close to 500 aftershocks have rattled the area, according to Turkey’s Kandilli seismology center.

There was still no power or running water in the region.

At least 1,352 people were injured in the quake, TRT television said. Nine people were rescued Tuesday.

The mother of the rescued baby, Semiha Karaduman, and the child’s grandmother, Gulsaadet, were huddled together with the infant held tight against her mother’s shoulder when rescuers found them, Direk said.

Hours after the infant was freed, the two adults were pulled from the half-flattened building and rushed to ambulances as onlookers clapped and cheered. The mother had been semiconscious, but woke up when rescuers arrived, Direk said.

Firefighters and rescuers ordered silence while they listened for noise from other possible survivors in the five-story apartment block, parts of which were being supported by a crane. But workers could not find the baby’s father and there were no other signs of life, Direk said.