An 8-year-old boy made it out of the wreckage of an apartment building in the Kahramanmaraş province, the epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that claimed thousands of lives in Türkiye since Monday, only two hours after rescuers saved his younger brother from the same mound of debris.

It took the emergency crews 32 hours to dig Muhammed out of the destruction but his rescue was a bright moment of joy for both rescue teams and citizens nearby.

A couple of districts over, a couple trapped in the debris of their home too was rescued by firefighters after waiting for 25 hours.

Amid the surge in the death toll, Kırıkkale provincial firefighters managed to reach out to Süleyman and Fadime Mağralı in just under an hour.

The couple, sustaining light injuries, invited the firefighters who rescued and accompanied them to the ambulance for tea before being taken to the hospital.