Chinese company helps save victims

A Chinese machinery company sent a rescue team to Turkiye's earthquake-hit Hatay province on Monday and has saved more than 20 people. The team faces a major challenge of getting power to run their tools.

On Monday, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southeastern Turkiye.

At 8:30 pm local time on Monday, eight staff members from Zoomlion's Turkiye branch set off from Istanbul to rescue people in Hatay province.

Zoomlion, headquartered in Changsha, Hunan province, manufactures equipment for the construction and agricultural industry.

They arrived after about 16 hours' travel and started their rescue at 12:40 am local time on Wednesday.

So far, the team has rescued more than 20 trapped people and continues searching in the rubble of collapsed high-rise residential buildings.

"Despite occasional aftershocks, rescuers are racing against the clock," said Huang Yunbing, a Zoomlion service engineer from the Turkish branch.

"We used tools such as hammers, awls and shovels to clear a road manually due to lack of generators. It took more than three hours to rescue the first trapped person.

"A little girl, about 15 years old, impressed me a lot. When I got into the cleared rescue passage, I saw her pressed under a mattress and a stone slab with only her head outside.

"She let out a faint cry. We used two jacks to lift the stone slab a little and pulled her out," Huang said.

The area suffers from power and water supply cuts, and Huang's team needs generators to power tools to dismantle broken houses.

Huang said that collapsed, broken and cracked buildings could be seen everywhere, and 25 excavators were assigned to different areas for rescue.

More equipment and staff from the company will be put in place to assist with the rescue.