Turkey quake survivor reunited with granddaughter

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STORY: Together again, three weeks after they were pulled from the rubble in Turkey:

Mithat Kilisli and his five-month-old granddaughter Zehra.

"I'll never leave you alone, my heart," he tells her.

Zehra was Kilisli's first thought when the earthquake woke him on February 6.

He managed to fetch the baby from her crib and find a safe shelter as the building collapsed around them.

They were trapped together for two and a half days, Zehra on his lap crying day and night.

Until rescuers heard their cries.

"I said 'save Zehra first, let me die, it is not important as long as Zehra is rescued'. My Zehra was saved, I gave her to the rescuers. I thought they were going to keep her outside until I was pulled out too. But as I later found out, someone gave her to AFAD."

AFAD emergency workers took Zehra to hospital in the city of Mersin, then to Ankara for treatment.

Kilisli faced an agoniZing wait until this reunion at a children's home run by Turkey's Family Ministry in Ankara, hundreds of miles from their home in Hatay province.

After a DNA test, Kilisli is allowed to take Zehra home.

Kilisli's wife, his daughter - Zehra's mother - his son-in-law and Zehra's four-year-old brother Yusuf were all killed in the earthquake.

"My wound is very deep, but right now I feel as if I have forgotten my pain. God bless everyone. We found baby Zehra, I'm taking her right now. I am the happiest person in the world. She's all that's left of her parents."

More than 45,000 people were killed in Turkey and millions were left homeless.

Turkey's Family Ministry says it's looking for the relations of 23 more children who survived.

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