Story by Claire Gilbody-Dickerson

A child, a mother and two men were rescued 10 days after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, which claimed the lives of more than 43,000 people. However, Aljazeera reports that the death toll has risen to 45,000.

Hope of finding more people alive is fading as the survival window for those trapped under the rubble rapidly closes.

Neither Turkey nor Syria have disclosed how many people are still missing following the earthquake, which hit at 4am on 6 February before another quake with almost the same intensity struck, becoming one of the worst natural disasters of the century.

A 14-year-old child named Osman Halebiye was pulled from the rubble overnight in the Turkish city of Antakya, after 17 bodies were retrieved from a collapsed building, according to media reports.

“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at the 260th hour,” police rescue team leader Okan Tosun told the Turkish DHA news agency.

A search and rescue team member warms himself in Adiyaman, Turkey (Photo: Ozkan Bilgin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)© Provided by The i

Neslihan Kilic, a 29-year-old mother-of-two, was removed from the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaraş in Turkey after being trapped for 258 hours.

Ms Kilic was saved after a forklift operator lifted her bed and noticed her hand move, DHA reported on Thursday.

Her brother-in-law described how “we had prepared her grave” and asked rescuers to stop the search in case they damaged her remains.

“Moments later, her voice was heard from under the ruins of the building,” he told CNN.

Ms Kilic’s husband and two children were still missing.

Two men were rescued from the debris of a collapsed hospital in Antakya, the capital of Turkey’s southern Hatay province.

Mustafa Avci, 34, one of the two men rescued, used a rescuer’s phone to call his family after he was brought to safety.

A boy helps his father wash his hands at a makeshift camp in Iskenderun, southern Turkey (Photo: Hussein Malla/AP)© Provided by The i

As he was taken away on a stretcher, he was put on a video call with his parents who showed him his newborn baby.

“I had completely lost all hope, this is a true miracle, they gave me my son back,” his father, Ali Avci, said.

“I saw the wreckage and I thought nobody could be saved alive from there. We were prepared for the worst.”

A mother who was 39 weeks pregnant when she was rescued for her collapsed home gave birth ten hours later, the BBC reported.

Faten al-Yousifi was rushed to the hospital where she gave birth to a baby girl called Loujain, the Arabic word for “silver”.

“I did not believe I was alive,” said Ms al-Yousifi, who had fled to Turkey from war-torn Yemen in 2014.

Her 29-year-old husband died after a building collapsed on their block of flats.

Despite the heartbreaking circumstances, Ms al-Yousifi said: “I thank everyone who helped me and stood with me.

“I had a family when mine wasn’t there.”

The quake killed at least 38,044 people in southern Turkey, officials said on Friday, while authorities in neighbouring Syria have reported 5,800 deaths.

As temperatures dip, many survivors have been left in tents in makeshift camps at factories, train cars and greenhouses.

A father-of-three in Kahramanmaraş said the situation was so dire he would rather have stayed under the rubble.

Haci Kose said he spent the first few days after the earthquake trying to find a tent for his family but failed to find one “wherever I went”.

He was eventually allocated a tent by an Azerbaijani aid agency, but said he still has problems getting enough to eat or finding a place to relieve himself.

“I wish we were stuck under the rubble too so we didn’t have to live in this situation,” Mr Kose said. “The aid isn’t coming to the people in the tents.”

The UN on Thursday appealed for more than $1bn (£838m) in funds for the Turkish relief operation. It has also launched a $400m (£335m) appeal for relief efforts in Syria.

On Thursday, Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, made his first televised comments since the quake hit, saying the response to the disaster required more resources than the government had available.

MSN

Additional reporting by agencies