The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) has announced that a second team has been sent to Türkiye to support earthquake rescue efforts.
The 48-strong team will provide support for the 20 officers that first flew there on Wednesday (8 Feb).
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
Ramped-up rescue efforts come after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked the country and its neighbour Syria on Monday (6 Feb).
BBC reports that the disaster has taken the lives of over 20,000 people so far.
On Thursday (9 Feb), SCDF shared via Facebook that it has dispatched 48 SCDF personnel and four search dogs from its K-9 unit to Adana, Türkiye.
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
They departed at 2am today (10 Feb) with additional equipment and medical supplies to aid in rescue efforts.
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
According to The Straits Times (ST), the team includes 37 officers from the Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team.
The rest of the team consists of operation officers, full-time national serviceman (NSF) medical doctors, paramedics, search specialists, support officers, hazardous material assessment officers, and one Asean Emergency Response and Assessment Team officer.
All 68 combined personnel will carry out Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) operations as part of the Operation Lionheart (OLH) contingent.
Earlier on Thursday (9 Feb), it was reported that SCDF had successfully saved a boy trapped in a collapsed building after a three-hour operation.
SCDF is racing against time to find more survivors as over 100 hours have passed since the earthquake.
It is also well past the 72-hour window that experts consider the most likely period to find survivors.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Türkiye, has called the earthquake “the disaster of the century”.
Indeed, it is the strongest earthquake the region has experienced since 1939.
During that time, a 7.8 magnitude quake took over 30,000 lives.
The death toll of Monday’s earthquake has already exceeded that of a similar disaster in 1999, which killed over 17,000.
We wish our brave SCDF officers all the best and hope they will all make it back home safely.
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook.
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