Crouched under concrete slabs and whispering "Inşallah" (Allah willing), rescuers carefully dug into the rubble, passed down the line to their prize – a 10-day-old newborn who survived for four days with his mother in the collapsed building.
His eyes-wide open, Turkish baby Yağiz Ulas was wrapped in a shiny thermal blanket and carried to a field medical centre in Samandağ, Hatay province, on Friday. Emergency workers also carried his mother, dazed and pale but conscious, on a stretcher, revealed video images from Türkiye's disaster agency.
The rescue of a number of small children has lifted the spirits of weary crews searching for survivors on the fifth day after a major earthquake struck Türkiye and neighboring Syria, killing more than 21,000 people.
At least seven children were rescued on Friday, videos released by disaster services showed. Their astonishing survival inspiring search crews who also saved several trapped adults.
The rescuers, including specialist teams from dozens of countries, toiled through the night in the ruins of thousands of wrecked buildings. Under freezing temperatures, they regularly called for silence as they listened for any sound of life from mangled concrete mounds.
In the Turkish town of Kahramanmaraş, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Samandağ, orange-clad workers squeezed into an air pocket beneath a fallen building to find a toddler, crying as dust fell into his eyes, before relief settled over him and rescuers gently brushed his face clean, video from the Defense Ministry showed.
Further to the east of Türkiye, the fearful face of another boy looked out from a pancaked building, his cries rising above the sound of the drills and grinders trying to free him on Friday morning in the city of Diyarbakır, where the Monday earthquakes and aftershocks turned apartment blocks into mounds of rubble and piles of shattered masonry.
After opening a wider hole, workers placed an oxygen mask on his face and carried him to safety. Like baby Yağiz, he was followed by his mother, on a stretcher, 103 hours after the earthquake struck.
And across the border in Syria, rescuers from the White Helmets group used bare hands to dig through plaster and cement, the air clouded with thick dust, until reaching the bare foot of a young girl, wearing pink pyjamas now grimy from days being trapped, but alive and free at last.
