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Generous Britons have raised more than £60million in three days to help thousands suffering after the huge earthquake that killed at least 33,000 people in Syria and Turkey.
As more children were pulled alive from rubble – including a girl of two trapped for 150 hours and a boy of eight freed after 155 – Metro readers were among hundreds of thousands who dipped into their pockets to help.
Cash buckets at Greggs stores and Tube stations also boosted the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) fund, launched by actors Daniel Craig and Tamsin Greig on Thursday.
The Royal Mail is matching staff fundraising up to £50,000, and NatWest up to £100,000. The same amount has been donated by the Co-op.
Liverpool and Everton footballers will sign shirts from tonight’s Merseyside derby and auction them for the appeal.
The DEC’s £60,030,000 fundraising tally includes £5million in matched donations from the government.
Chief executive Saleh Saeed said: ‘Support across the country in stadiums, high streets and communities is testament to the incredible compassion and generosity of the British public. We’re incredibly grateful.’
Official figures put the death toll from last Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake at 29,605 inside Turkey and more than 3,500 in Syria. UN experts suggest it could soar above 50,000.
Turkish authorities estimate that 13.5million people were affected from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, people at least 155 miles from the epicentre were killed.
Recovery efforts have been hampered by freezing weather, dozens of aftershocks and blocked aid corridors to already-damaged infrastructure in civil war-torn Syria.
Semih Ege Ince, eight, was pulled out in Gaziantep yesterday. The girl of two and a 12-year-old named Cudie were saved from the wreckage in Hatay, where a seven-month-old baby had been rescued on Saturday. British fire crews liberated a police officer and a woman trapped for 120 hours in the province.
Phil Irving, 46, from Haverfordwest, said: ‘These people were entombed. When we’re successful it gives the team a boost.
‘But I don’t think you ever have a rescue that isn’t tarnished with the reality that the survivor will have to deal with grief for the people that didn’t make it.’
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