AlHijjah 1, 1432, Oct 28, 2011, SPA -- Rescue workers pulled out a 13-year-old boy alive from the rubble of an apartment block early on Friday, five days after a powerful earthquake that killed more than 500 people in eastern Turkey, Reuters reported. The rescue lifted Turkish spirits as thousands of quake survivors endured a fifth freezing and wet night without a roof over their heads. The boy, named as Ferhat Tokay, was put in a neck brace and taken on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance after being rescued in the town of Ercis, the hardest hit by Sunday's 7.2 magnitude quake, television images showed. "My feelings are inexplicable. It was like taking my own son out," an exhausted but elated medic, Baris Dogan, told Reuters after the rescue. "We started digging and at first we saw his hand. And then we started speaking to him. He said 'I am hungry and thirsty'." Tokay was rescued from the first floor of a collapsed seven-storey block of flats where he lived with his family on the main street in Ercis, opposite a mosque whose minarets had collapsed. Buildings remained standing around the wreckage. Around 50 people continued digging through the rubble in the hope of finding more people alive. As many as 10 were still missing from the building but there were no immediate signs of anyone else alive there. "We didn't believe he would die. He is a strong child. I feel so good right now and I'd like to say to him get well soon," 16-year-old Ozgur Yildiz, a friend of Tokay's, said after hearing he had survived. Tokay was the second person to be rescued within a matter of hours after an 18-year-old man was brought out on Thursday evening to cheers among grief-stricken quake survivors. People left homeless by the quake in the predominantly Kurdish eastern province of Van have complained bitterly over the slow delivery of relief items like tents. Drenched by pouring rain, more and more are falling sick, and with the first winter snows expected in November there is an urgent need to get people under cover fast. Although most search operations are beginning to wind down, more than 180 people have been found alive under collapsed buildings since the quake struck just before 2:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Sunday, according to an official count. By late on Thursday, the death toll was 535, with 2,300 people hurt in Turkey's biggest quake in more than a decade. No official figures were available for the homeless. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put the number of "affected people" at 50,000 in a news release to raise funds for relief efforts. In Ercis alone, a town of around 100,000 people, it was clear that hardly anyone was going back to their homes even if they were still standing. -- SPA
