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Key developments in the aftermath of the Turkiye, Syria earthquake

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Shailesh Khanduri
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Rescue Turkey Syria Earthquake

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Adana (Turkiye): Rescuers have pulled more survivors from the debris of the Feb. 6 earthquake that devastated parts of Turkiye and Syria even as the window for finding people alive is closing fast.

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Here's a look at the key developments Friday from the aftermath of the earthquake.

DEATH TOLL RISES

The Turkish disaster management agency has updated the death toll from the powerful earthquake in Turkiye to 38,044, raising the overall number of fatalities in both Turkiye and Syria to 41,732.

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The death toll is certain to increase further as search teams retrieve more bodies amid the devastation.

The powerful 7.8 earthquake has become Turkiye's deadliest disaster in modern history.

MORE SURVIVORS RESCUED

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More than 10 days after the powerful earthquake struck, rescuers overnight pulled out a child, a woman and two men alive from wreckage.

The latest rescues came as crews began clearing up 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 when a forklift operator lifted her bed and noticed her hand move, the private DHA news agency reported late Thursday.

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Her father, Cuma Yalcinoz, had been waiting outside the building. "I believed she would come out," he said. "I had a feeling." Kilic's husband and children were still missing.

In the city of Antakya, police rescue crews found 12-year-old 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.

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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."

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UN AID CROSSES INTO SYRIA

A total of 143 trucks carrying aid from Turkiye into northwest Syria have crossed the border since Feb. 9, a United Nations official said.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that the trucks are carrying a "multitude" of items from six U.N. agencies including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera testing kits, essential medicines, and food from the World Food Program. They crossed through the border gates of Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh, he said.

Meanwhile, The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkiye's government to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

"In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security," the Rome-based agency said in a statement. (AP)

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