Turkiye: Couple saved 296 hours after quake, but children die
Istanbul, Feb 18: A couple and their son were pulled alive from under a collapsed apartment building more than 12 days after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake ravaged parts of Turkiye and Syria, although the child later died at a hospital, Turkish state media reported Saturday.
A foreign search team from Kyrgyzstan rescued Samir Muhammed Accar, 49, his wife, Ragda, 40, and their 12-year-old son while digging through the rubble of the apartment building in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
They were removed at about 11:30 a.m. local time (8:30 GMT), or 296 hours after the Feb 6 quake, and quickly transferred to ambulances. TV footage showing medics fixing an IV drip to the man's arm as he lay on a stretcher.
One of the Kyrgyz rescuers said the team also found the bodies of two dead children. Anadolu later reported they also were the children of Samir Muhammad and Ragda Accar.
During a visit to Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said the father was conscious and being treated at Mustafa Kemal University Hospital. Anadolu published photos showing American TV personality and former US Senate candidate Mehmet Oz visiting the recovering man.
Reporting on their conversation, Anadolu said Samir Muhammed Accar described how he survived the ordeal by drinking his own urine. He also told Dr Oz that his children responded to his voice for the first two or three days but he heard nothing from after that.
Hatay province, where Antakya is located, was one of areas hit hardest by the earthquake, which killed at least 40,642 people in Turkiye and 3,688 in Syria.
Search and rescue operations are continuing in Turkiye, although the head of the country's disaster response agency said they would end on Sunday.
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Jharkhand horror: Man kills live-in partner, chops body into 40 pieces
Ranchi (PTI): A 25-year-old man, who works as a butcher, allegedly strangled to death his live-in partner and chopped her body into 40 to 50 pieces in a forested area in Jharkhand’s Khunti district, police said on Wednesday.
The accused, identified as Naresh Bhengra, was arrested.
The matter came to light after around a fortnight after the killing when a stray dog was found with human body parts near Jordag village in Jariagarh police station on November 24.
Bhengra was in a live-in relationship with the deceased, a 24-year-old woman also from Khunti district, in Tamil Nadu for the past couple of years. Sometime back, he returned to Jharkhand, got married to another woman without telling his partner anything and went back to the southern state without his wife to join her.
"The brutal incident occurred on November 8 when they reached Khunti as the accused who had married another woman did not wish to take her home. Instead, he took her to a forest near his house at Jordag village in Jariagarh police station and chopped the body into pieces. The man has been arrested," Khunti Superintendent of Police Aman Kumar told PTI.
Inspector Ashok Singh who investigated the case said the man worked in a butcher shop in Tamil Nadu and was expert in slicing chicken.
“He admitted chopping the body parts of the woman into 40 to 50 pieces before leaving those in the forest for wild animals to feast on. The police recovered several parts on November 24 after a dog in the area was seen with a hand," Singh told PTI.
Singh said that the woman, who was unaware of his marriage, pressured him to return to Khunti. After reaching Ranchi, they boarded a train on November 24 and headed to the man's village.
"Under a plan, the man took her to Khunti in an autorickshaw near his home and asked her to wait. He returned with sharp weapons and strangulated her with her dupatta after raping her. He then cut the body into 40 to 50 pieces and left for his home to live with his wife," Singh said.
The woman, however, had informed her mother that she had boarded a train and would be living with her partner, the police officer said.
Following the recovery of body parts, a bag was also found in the forest with the murdered woman's belongings including her Aadhaar card. The mother of the woman was called at the spot and she identified her daughter's belongings.
"The mother suspected the man behind the crime who after being nabbed by the police admitted to chopping the woman into pieces," the official added.
The incident has sent shockwaves among people in the region, with the Shraddha Walker murder case of 2022 still fresh in their memory.
Walker was killed by her live-in partner who chopped her body into pieces before dumping them in the jungle in South Delhi’s Mehrauli.
