Rescue teams in Turkey on Saturday pulled to safety a family of five who survived inside their collapsed home for five days following a major earthquake in a sprawling border region of Turkey and Syria. The death toll, however, was approaching 25,000.

They first extricated mother and daughter Havva and Fatmagul Aslan from among a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, HaberTurk reported. The teams later reached the father, Hasan Aslan, but he insisted that his other daughter, Zeynep, and son Saltik Bugra be saved first.

Then, as the father was brought out, rescuers cheered and chanted “God is Great!”

Two hours later, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and an hour after that a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay, nearly 132 hours after the quake. The rescues bring to 12 the number of people rescued Saturday, despite diminishing hopes amid freezing temperatures.

"What day is it?" 16-year-old Kamil Can Agas asked his rescuers after he was pulled out of the rubble in Kahramanmaras, according to NTV television.

Members of the mixed Turkish and Kyrgyz search teams embraced each other, as did the teenager's cousins, with one of them calling out: “He is out, brother. He is out. He is here.”