AFAD rescue team pulls 4-year old girl out alive from debris 91 hours after Izmir quake

AFAD rescue team in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir has pulled a 4-year old girl out alive from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building four days after a strong earthquake hit Turkey and Greece.
The child was extracted safely, disaster management agency AFAD tweeted, from a collapsed building in earthquake-hit Izmir's Bayraklı district.

The girl, Ayda Gezgin, was seen being taken into an ambulance on Tuesday, wrapped in a thermal blanket, amid the sound of cheers and applause from rescue workers.

Ayla, the 107th survivor to be rescued, was taken to hospital.

On Twitter, Mehmet Güllüoğlu, the head of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), expressed happiness at the little girl's rescue.

Speaking to reporters following Ayda's rescue, a rescue team member, Nusret Aksoy, said he spotted the struggling young girl waving her hand.

"We heard someone shout," said a rescuer as other emergency workers applauded, broadcast footage showed.

"She told us, 'I am Ayda, I am OK,'" he said on TRT channel.
"I heard a voice. I put my head through the hole," the rescue worker told journalists. He recalled her saying she was very thirsty and requested water and ayran, a yoghurt beverage.

"I held onto her until the ambulance came. We kept talking. She was OK," he added.

The death toll in the earthquake reached 102, after emergency crews retrieved more bodies elsewhere in Turkey's third-largest city.

Turkey is among the world's most seismically active zones, and has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past, including the 1999 Marmara quake.