Rescuers refuse to give up searching for seven-year-old brother of girl found alive in rubble

Rescuers have refused to give up searching for the brother of a girl who was found alive in the rubble of their home ten days after Turkey’s devastating earthquake.

Aleyna Ölmez, 17, went an incredible 248 hours without food or water before she was pulled from the ruins of her family apartment on Thursday.

The bodies of her mother Birgül and father Cengiz were found near her, but her seven-year-old brother is missing in the ruins of the Atabey apartment block in the Kayaba district of Kahramanmaras.

MailOnline witnessed grim scenes today as search and rescue teams continued to probe into the collapsed eight storey block to find any sign of her brother or other victims.

A steady stream of bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble before being placed in black body bags and taken away by ambulance.

A member of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) at the scene said: ‘They keep going. They are looking for the boy.’

The story of Aleyna’s incredible survival against the odds was held up as a beacon of hope that others might still be clinging to life under crushed concrete as the official death toll from the earthquake and its aftershocks rose to more than 45,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

As Aleyna recovered in hospital, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally called her relatives to offer praise for her rescue and condolences for the loss of her parents.

Rescuers told MailOnline how they found Aleyna in a room which somehow remained largely intact as other flats crumbled around it. Miraculously she only suffered a fractured pelvis, bruising to her foot and minor scratches when the earthquake struck.

Dramatic pictures at the scene show how the block above a small mosque collapsed into a pile of crushed concrete and twisted metal rods.

Local residents condemned the builders of the 35-year-old block which fell down while other similar sized residential buildings next to it remained standing.

Resul Sahin wrote on social media: ‘Shame on the one who built the building, it became a grave for those who lived that long.’

Around 55 residents of the block are said to have escaped by running outside just seconds before it collapsed in the earthquake just after 4am on Monday last week.

But another 85 people including Aleyna and her family were trapped with most of them apparently crushed to death instantly.

Rescuers are said to have spotted her legs and realised she was alive after seeing them move in a hole that been dug in the ruins.

She was pulled out and stretchered away to an ambulance as her watching relatives wept with relief and hugged those who saved her. When asked how she was feeling, Aleyna said: ‘Thank you. I’m fine, thank God’.

Describing how she had no food or drink, she added: ‘I had nothing. I had to spend time by myself.’

Her aunt Güler Duman who will now care for her said: ‘We are happy, thank God, I hope we will be even happier when she is completely better.

‘Thank God, our prayers have been answered. We have been praying to Allah for 11 days, thank God, we were able to reunite in a healthy way.’

Aleyna was initially taken to the Sütçü Imam University Hospital in Kahramanmaras close to the epicentre of the 3.8 magnitude earthquake.

She was later flown to hospital in Ankara where she is expected to make a full recovery.

President Erdogan tole Aleyna’s aunt: ‘I hope we will see her cured quickly, and we will have the opportunity to see her healthy state.’

Expressing condolences for the loss of her parents, the president added: ‘We pray to my Lord to treat them with paradise and beauty.’

Dr. Cengiz Dilber, a paediatrician who treated Aleyna in Kahramanmara?, said: ‘She is a very resilient girl. Aleyna was a very different story for us.’

Other doctors said it was ‘extraordinary’ that she seemed to have escaped serious kidney damage after going without water for ten days.

Electrician Ali Erdogan, 58, whose home opposite the Atabey block remained standing , described the moment Aleyna was found, saying: ‘They had a hole and a dog said that she was in there.

‘Some movement was seen, and she was pulled out. Everyone was so happy that she was alive. It is amazing that she lived so long.’

Ali said he had sent his family to stay with a cousin in Adana while he was staying on alone in his flat to help rescuers.

He added: ‘Everyone will carry on looking for Aleyna’s brother. Nobody wants to say that he is dead for sure.’

Another resident said: ‘If she survived then he could be down there as well. We cannot give up.’

A rescuer from a team of Turkish miners working at the scene said: ‘We always knew that someone would come out of the area. Thank God we pulled out one.’

Another miner added: ‘We are all working together. We say there is no despair in Allah. Let’s keep working’.

Chief Physician Prof. Dr. Tanıl Kendirli of the Ankara University Hospital said Aleyna underwent an operation on Friday morning on her fractured pelvis.

He added: ‘We hope that in the evening she will start to eat by mouth and drink water. Her general condition is good at the moment.’

Associate Dr. Mahmut Kalem added: ‘We hope that she will be able to walk soon. Our current prediction is that we hope that there will be no problems.’