A Turkish soldier climbed into the bucket of an excavator on Saturday to search an earthquake-damaged home in Antakya for a cell phone belonging to a 75-year-old woman who feared her son was dead after five days without contact.
The woman, who gave her name as Mama Busra, had asked aid workers to find her phone and was waiting to call her son in a nearby park where tents were set up for those left homeless by last week's devastating earthquake.
Responding to her plea, Murathan Adil, a special ops soldier who had come to the southern city from Ankara to help with rescues, was raised to the second-floor balcony of the remains of her building. On a narrow street turned into a cul-de-sac by the quake's destruction, the building's basement had collapsed, its facade had partially caved in, windows were smashed and cracks exposed.
Once Adil reached the balcony, another rescue worker inside handed him a red bag containing Mama Busra's belongings, including her phone, before the excavator lowered him back down.
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