WATCH | India's Rescue Team Receives Warm Welcome at Adana Airport in Earthquake-hit Turkey

India’s NDRF personnel got a warm welcome at Adana Airport on Friday after they returned from rescue and search operations in various earthquake-hit areas of Turkey.

Following the rescue operation, a 47-member National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team along with dog squad members Rambo and Honey returned to India on Friday.

NDRF Deputy Commandant Deepak Talwar said that the NDRF personnel rescued two children from the rubble and evacuated 85 bodies during their 10-day engagements in earthquake-hit Turkey despite tough weather circumstances in the country.

“The weather was too cold in Turkey compared to India when we arrived there on February 7. Our troops engaged in the operation at two specific locations nearly 150 km away from the Adana Airport in Turkey…We rescued two children and evacuated 85 bodies from the debris during our 10-day operation,” news agency ANI quoted Talwar as saying.

India announced ‘Operation Dost’ after a 7.8 earthquake devastated Turkey earlier this month. After Prime Minister Modi’s instructions to offer all possible assistance to the country, India immediately dispatched search and rescue teams of the NDRF, medical teams and relief material to Turkey. The tragedy has killed more than 43,000 in Turkey and Syria.

Turkish envoy in Delhi, Firat Sunel had earlier expressed gratitude to New Delhi for help. “This swift reaction from the Indian side is very, very important, because it’s a matter of life and death, and we really appreciate very much the contribution and support from the Indian side,” he had said.

The quake was the strongest earthquake in Turkey since 1939 when a powerful temblor struck eastern city of Erzincan and killed about 33,000 people, Bloomberg reported quoting Okan Tuysuz, a professor of geology at Istanbul Technical University.

Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. A quake along the North Anatolian fault line in the northern Turkish region of Duzce killed more than 17,000 people in 1999. But the recent earthquake occurred on the other side of the country, along the East Anatolian fault.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency in the ten provinces hardest hit by the earthquake.

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