Hero cop saves 8-year-old boy from drowning in Türkiye

MALATYA, Türkiye (AA) - A team of police divers have rescued an 8-year-old boy who fell in a partially frozen pond in Türkiye's eastern province of Malatya while trying to get his toy.

Diver Adem Koksal who rescued Mehmet Dogan, a boy who survived the twin earthquakes that shook the country's southern region, said a passerby informed police about the incident.

At that time, the police team was distributing stoves to the earthquake victims, he said.

When I saw the child struggling to stay afloat, I handed my gun to my superior and jumped into the water, he said.

"I reached the child, but there was a lot of ice in the way, so I put the child on an ice sheet. We pushed him ashore," he said.

Once we got the child to safety, we protected him against hypothermia in line with the training we have received, he said.

"The boy and his brother had retrieved a toy from their house (which had collapsed), and the toy fell in the pond. The boy tried to walk on ice and at a certain spot the ice was thin and it cracked.

"We rescued the child with his toy, we were very happy for him,” he said.

There was a teddy bear in the aid boxes we had, and so we gave it to him, the police officer added.

At least 43,556 people were killed by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye on Feb. 6.

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes, centered in the Kahramanmaras province, affected more than 13 million people across 11 provinces, including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, Elazig, and Sanliurfa.​​​​​​​