The Israeli Defense Force rescue team returned to Israel on Tuesday after saving lives and defying the odds almost daily by plucking survivors out of the rubble in Turkey.
On Monday, six days after the earthquake, team members pulled out a 3-year-old Turkish boy from beneath the ruins. The boy was detected in the town of Cinarcik by a Turkish rescue team, which called the IDF to rescue him. They did so within minutes.
“A Turkish team discovered him and they screamed to us to come and help,” Noam Amit of the rescue team told Israel Radio.
The boy, Ismail Cimen, whose father and three sisters were killed in the quake, spent more than six days alone in a dark nook under a collapsed balcony. Doctors expect him to make a full recovery.
Another Turkish child was found alive and rescued by Turks in the nearby town of Yalova after spending 172 hours buried by the rubble.
The IDF field hospital in Adapazari province will remain for at least another month at the request of the World Health Organization.
Israel is also getting involved in offering relief to those displaced and injured by the quake. Earlier this week, Israel was set to ship over 50 tons of supplies to Istanbul. More shipments are expected to be made in the coming days as contributions and offers of assistance continue to pour in.
The IDF rescue team is one of the last foreign teams to remain in Turkey; many of the others gave up hope over the weekend when odds for finding survivors dropped.
In Cinarcik, the IDF rescue teams and army doctors held a memorial service for the 25 Israelis and tens of thousands of Turks who perished.
“Again we have been called on a humanitarian mission and again we have been called to save lives,” said Col. Udi Ben-Uri, the head of the IDF rescue unit. “Resting on our shoulders is a national and human duty to save lives in every place, in every site.”
The IDF teams rescued 12 survivors and uncovered 146 bodies at three sites since they arrived there Wednesday of last week, a day after the quake struck.
Most of their efforts were focused in Cinarcik and Yalova, where the Israelis had been vacationing.
At home, Israelis were busy donating goods for the relief effort. One collection center at Kibbutz Ga’ash had to be temporarily closed because there was no more space for storing goods donated by the public.
“The day after we learned of the disaster it was decided to launch a massive humanitarian aid campaign, as we have done in the past in the case of Kosovo and natural disasters elsewhere in the world,” Kibbutz Artzi Movement spokeswoman Ayellet Frisch said. “The main needs are for tents, sleeping bags, blankets, clothes, preserved foods and hygiene products.”
The campaign has been conducted in cooperation with the United Kibbutz Movement, the Latet volunteer group, the Turkish Immigrants Association and the Israel-Turkey Business Center in coordination with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Turkish authorities.
Collection centers were established at Ga’ash, Kibbutz Alonim in the Jezreel Valley, Kibbutz Barkai in the Nahal Iyon area, Nitzanim in the south, Kfar Hamaccabi in the Zvulun Valley region of Haifa and in Kiryat Tivon.
Israeli Arab leaders are also organizing a nationwide aid campaign. Collection points have been set up in towns and villages throughout the country, in some cases using mosques as the main donation centers.