British rescuers pull out more survivors but hopes fade for thousands still in quake rubble

BRITISH rescue teams pulled survivors of the Turkish earthquake to safety today as dire warnings were issued that thousands more were at risk of dying trapped in rubble.

- Ross Lydall and Matt Watts

As the number of dead rose beyond 16,000, dramatic images showed mother Serap Topal, 33, and her five-year-old son, Mehmet Hamza, being rescued by British and German aid workers in Kahramanmaras - 68 hours after the first earthquake struck.

It came as another UK rescue team in Antakya located a 60-year-old woman named Salva, buried under a collapsed three-storey building for three days without food or water. Davey the sniffer dog was the first to confirm that she was alive and she was carried to safety on a stretcher.

London firefighter Sarah Mimnagh, part of the 77-strong UKISAR (International Search and Rescue) team, spoke to her throughout the painstaking rescue. She told the BBC: "The fact that she had been in there for three-and-a-half days and was still talking... she was smiling the minute she saw us."

In Hatay, a baby was pulled from rubble after more than 65 hours in the cold. But volunteers say the scale of destruction is "unfathomable", with 10 cities in Turkey in ruins, along with vast rural areas on either side of the Syrian border.

In some towns, heavy machinery is being used to check for bodies and make buildings safe - a sign that hope of finding survivors has ended.

More than 12,000 of the deaths are in south-eastern Turkey and about 4,000 are thought to have occurred in Syria.