10 February 2004	Tuesday	18 Zilhaj 1424

ANKARA, Feb 9: A 24-year-old woman buried alive for nearly a week was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed Turkish housing block on Monday, the second "miracle survivor" from a tragedy in which at least 87 died.

Yasemin Yaprakci was exhausted but conscious when rescued after 157 hours without food and water, trapped under rubble, alongside the bodies of relatives killed when building collapsed last Monday in the central Turkish city of Konya.

The woman was calm and controlled during the three hours of work needed to pry her out from under heavy slabs of concrete and dead bodies, rescuers said. The real boost came when Yaprakci was told her one-and-half-year old daughter, Bahar, was still alive and she was able to speak to her husband over a walkie-talkie, rescuers said.

Initial reports suggested her condition was life-threatening. But a doctor at the Gulhane military hospital in the capital Ankara, where she taken by helicopter for emergency treatment, said the young mother was doing fine. "She is not in a critical condition... She has no fractures. She has some air accumulated under the tissue over her lungs," the doctor said.

She was the second miracle survivor to be pulled from the wreckage of the building which collapsed last Monday evening, as many residents would have been celebrating a Muslim festival. -AFP