“We have managed to save nine people, including a family of four, so we are positive about further rescue work,” Grzegorz Borowiec, who leads the Polish search and rescue team, told the state PAP news agency on Wednesday morning.
He added: “We have begun the new day with huge optimism. Three new units are joining the action, so hopefully we’ll be finding more survivors.”
Shortly afterwards, officials confirmed that a tenth person, a young woman, has been saved from the rubble by the Polish team.
Borowiec added that the Polish firefighters have worked well into the night on Tuesday to pull people from under the debris.
The ten survivors rescued by the Polish team also include a 13-year-old girl, according to officials.
Borowiec told PAP that the situation on the ground was “very, very difficult,” with “not enough rescue workers” and “a lack of heavy equipment to pull people from under the rubble.”
He added: “Local services are overstretched. The scale of destruction from the two earthquakes is unimaginable, as reflected in the number of victims and people who have been saved.”
The Polish search and rescue team has been in Turkey since Tuesday, working to save earthquake survivors in the southern town of Besni, the PAP news agency reported.
Earthquakes devastate Turkey and Syria
More than 9,600 people in southern Turkey and northern Syria are now confirmed to have been killed, as rescuers continue to dig for survivors buried under Monday’s two earthquakes, news outlets reported.
The most powerful, 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit at 4.17am local time on Monday, when most people were asleep in their homes, Britain’s The Times newspaper reported.
Millions of people are expected to be affected by the disaster, which struck a region already marred by conflict, economic collapse and a refugee crisis, according to news reports.
Meanwhile, villages and towns near the mountains could see temperatures drop as low as minus 15C, The Times reported.
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Source: PAP, The Times, BBC
