Families pray to find a body to mourn

Optician Cuneyt Eroglu, 45-years-old, collects glasses and other stuff from his collapsed shop in Antakya, Turkey Friday. Pic/AFP

Survivors were still being dug out of the rubble in earthquake-hit Turkey, but for many grieving families their only hope is that the remains of their loved ones will be found so that they can mourn at their grave site.

"Would you pray to find a dead body? We do ... to deliver the body to the family," said bulldozer operator Akin Bozkurt as his machine clawed at the rubble of a destroyed building in the town of Kahramanmaras. "You recover a body from under tonnes of rubble. Families are waiting with hope," Bozkurt said. "They want to have a burial ceremony. They want a grave."

Also Read: Death toll in Turkey and Syria earthquake surpasses 43,000

According to Islamic tradition, the dead should be buried as quickly as possible. The head of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, Yunus Sezer, said the search and rescue efforts would largely end on Sunday night. More than 46,000 people have been killed after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6. The toll is expected to soar, with some 3,45,000 apartments in Turkey now known to have been destroyed, and many still missing.

Neither Turkey nor Syria have said how many people are still missing following the quake. Twelve days after the quake hit, workers from Kyrgyzstan tried to save a Syrian family of five from the rubble of a building in Antakya in southern Turkey. Three people, including a child, were rescued alive. The mother and father survived, but the child died later of dehydration, the rescue team said. An older sister and a twin also did not make it. "We heard shouts when we were digging today an hour ago. When we find people who are alive we are always happy," Atay Osmanov, a member of the rescue team, told Reuters.

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