Rescue efforts in quake zone 'greatly' coordinated with Turkish disaster agency: Spanish team

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

ISTANBUL (AA) - Coordination with the Turkish disaster agency and local authorities during rescue operations in Türkiye's quake-struck Gaziantep was “great," said the captain of the Spanish Military Emergency Unit (UME) in the city.

"The coordination with AFAD (Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency), was very very great and with local authority too. So with our reach-out procedure, we achieved a lot of goals," Capt. Juan Rodriguez Juste, part of a group of Spaniards sent to help Türkiye in the wake of Monday’s quakes, told Anadolu.

Noting that his team carried out two rescue operations in Gaziantep so far, Rodriguez said the first was on Wednesday in Islahiye where his unit supported the Turkish team in rescuing two people.

The second came on day five of the disaster when the unit saved two little children and their mother in Nurdagi.

"We got all the information from the coordination point of AFAD. We went to the point where AFAD told us," the captain said.

He underlined that the UME "worked more than 20 hours" to locate the mother and children under the rubble of a collapsed building.

"The police (gendarme) and the local civilians helped us to accomplish the mission properly," he added.

He noted that a volunteer from AFAD was with his team from the beginning as an interpreter to make information flow as smoothly as possible.

- 'Be patient, we're coming'

On Friday, the Spanish Defense Ministry announced that the UME saved a little boy and his sister alive.

A few hours later, the ministry shared more good news from the team, saying that they also saved the mother.

The UME also shared footage of the rescue in Nurdagi, in which they located mother Leyla under the rubble with the help of a Turkish gendarmerie and asked for information about her children.

According to the gendarmerie in the video, Leyla tells them that the boy, 17 months old, is in her arms, and the girl, 5, is at her feet.

"Okay, be patient, we're coming," the gendarmerie can be heard saying.

Some 22,300 people were killed and over 80,000 others injured by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye on Monday, according to the latest official figures.

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes, centered in the Kahramanmaras province, affected more than 13 million people across 10 provinces, also including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa.

Several countries in the region, including Syria and Lebanon, also felt the strong tremors that struck Türkiye in the space of less than 10 hours.