Earthquake survivor sings for joy as he is rescued from under rubble after 140 hours

A man trapped under the rubble for 140 hours in an earthquake-hit Turkish city was finally rescued from the crush by rescuers.

Through a hole in the rubble of a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, rescue workers could be seen talking to Muhammed Habib before he was finally freed.

Video footage last night showed the 27-year-old chanting verses from the Koran during a 10-hour operation to free him.

Habib raised his fist in the air and shouted “God is the greatest” to cheers from the rescuers below as he was finally pulled out by a machine.

The 7.8-magnitude tremor shook southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria on Monday and is considered the world’s seventh-deadliest natural disaster this century.

In the six days since the disaster, responders have worked tirelessly to save others.

Crews pulled two women, Menekse Tabak, 70, and Masallah Cicek, 55, from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey.

The women were wrapped in blankets before being taken to the hospital.

The town of Kahramanmaras was near the epicenter of Monday’s first quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale.

This morning the death toll reached more than 30,000 people.

It has now been confirmed that 29,605 people have died in Turkey, while a further 3,553 have been killed in Syria.

Attempts were made to reach other survivors in Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the first quake. However, those found alive remain the rare exception.

A large temporary cemetery was built on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday.

Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field while trucks and ambulances arrived loaded with black body bags.

The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than 1m apart, were marked with simple wooden planks embedded vertically in the ground.

The picture of the emergency across the border in Syria is less clear.

The death toll in Syria’s rebel northwest region has reached 2,166, according to the White Helmets rescue force group.

Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay said late Saturday that arrest warrants had been issued for 131 people suspected of being responsible for collapsed buildings.

Turkey’s justice minister has vowed to punish anyone responsible and prosecutors have started collecting samples from buildings to find evidence of building materials.

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