'How is my mother?': the first question asked by an earthquake survivor rescued 261 hours after the earthquake in Turkey

Rescuer in Turkey says he has never seen a similar disaster 1:26

(CNN) --

"How are my mom and everyone?" asks the man on the gurney, talking calmly into a cell phone.

Crying in disbelief, his friend replies: "Everyone is fine... everyone is waiting for you... I'm coming to you."

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This was the emotional exchange that followed the rescue of 33-year-old Mustafa Avci, who was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey's southern Hatay province 261 hours after a powerful magnitude 7 earthquake struck. .8 will shake the region on February 6.

Mustafa Avci talks to his friend on the phone after being rescued.

(Turkish Ministry of Health)

On Friday, Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video showing the phone call between Avci and his friend, in a powerful reminder that even now, 11 days after the quake, it is still possible to find survivors against all odds. .

Avci's rescue late Thursday night came as the death toll in Turkey and Syria rose to at least 43,885 people, according to official figures.

In the video, Avci can be seen wearing a neck brace and appears wide-eyed and hopeful as she asks, “Did everyone get away okay…?

Let me listen to their voices for a moment."

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His friend sobs again: "I'm driving... I'm on my way to you... Brother, I'm on my way."

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Avci then kisses the hand of the rescuer holding the phone and thanks him.

"May God be a thousand times happy with you," he says.

Koca, the minister, said both Avci and a second man, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, were rescued around the same time from under the ruins of a private hospital building.

Sakiroglu was at the hospital for a checkup when the earthquake struck, his father told CNN affiliate CNN Turk.

Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, a 26-year-old man, was rescued on Thursday, 261 hours after the earthquake that struck Turkey.

(From @drfahrettinkoca/Twitter)

The two men were found when a rescue team saw a leg dangling from a pile of rubble after a machine operator cleared debris from the surface.

The men were taken to Hatay makeshift hospital for treatment, the health minister said.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is in southern Turkey, said it was unusual for people to survive more than 100 hours trapped in rubble and that the most successful rescues usually occurred within the 24 hours.

“These are remarkable stories and people stand up…in these situations,” he said.

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The rescue of the two men follows that of a 13-year-old boy named Mustafa in Antakya, Hatay province, on Wednesday, 228 hours after the earthquake.

Mustafa's survival was "certainly a miracle," rescue worker Özer Aydinli told Gupta in an interview on Thursday.

Aydinli said she thought her fellow rescuers were "hallucinating" and assumed the boy had "died with his eyes open."

But the boy shouted: “Brother!

I do not feel my legs.

Save me!"

A team of more than 70 people rushed to help.

“Even now, tears come to our eyes from time to time,” Aydinli said, referring to the boy's rescue.

“He is quite well and conscious.

Hopefully it gets better."

Rescue teams find a 13-year-old boy named Mustafa 228 hours after the devastating earthquake.

(Istanbul Municipality)

'People have been through hell'

Rescue teams are still trying to access hard-to-reach areas of Turkey and Syria, but the number of people found alive is dwindling.

Meanwhile, while donations are pouring in from around the world, many survivors have been left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures and without access to basic necessities.

“Many lives have been saved, many people have been pulled from the rubble by their neighbors, by their friends, by their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers.

Frontline health workers have done an incredible job in both countries,” World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies director Mike Ryan told a briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.

Rescues of February 14, 8 days after the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey 1:17

The WHO said it was particularly concerned about people in northwestern Syria, a rebel-controlled region with little access to aid.

The United Nations health agency said it had asked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to open more border points with Turkey to allow aid in.

“It is clear that the area of ​​greatest concern at the moment is the area of ​​northwestern Syria, Ryan said.

Aid delivery to Syria has been constrained by restrictions on the cross-border mechanism agreed by a 2014 UN Security Council resolution to allow aid to cross at four points on the Turkey-Syria border.

“The impact of the earthquake on government-controlled areas of Syria is significant, but the services are there and there is access to these people,” Ryan said.

“We have to remember here that in Syria we have had 10 years of war.

The health system is incredibly fragile.

People have been through hell."

CNN's Gul Tuysuz and Philip Wang contributed to this report.

earthquake in turkey