Rescue bid after air crash survivor’s call is broadcast

THOUSANDS of rescue workers searched the snow-covered mountains of central Turkey yesterday for survivors of a helicopter crash as an injured passenger appealed for help in a television broadcast.

A nationalist party leader was one of six people on board when the aircraft crashed on Wednesday, and Turkish political leaders suspended campaigning for Sunday’s local elections out of respect for him.

Surviving passenger, Ismail Gunes, badly injured and freezing cold, called from the wreckage of the crash.

“I think everyone is dead,” Gunes said in the emergency call broadcast yesterday by Turkish TV.

“I am starting to freeze. I am cold.

“There’s snow, there’s fog everywhere,” said Gunes, a cameraman for Turkish news agency IHA.

He was apparently wedged inside the helicopter.

The emergency responder told him police were trying to find the crash site.

Later, Gunes moaned and again appealed for help: “My leg’s badly broken. Madam, have you still not located us? We will freeze. I think the others are dead. I cannot move my foot. It is badly broken.

“When will you locate us, madam?”

Orhan Sali, an IHA official, said: “We fear for him, his voice was shaken and the temperatures were minus 20 degrees there last night... We keep praying for him.”

The government says rescue workers could not detect a locator signal from the helicopter.

“We hope we can find them alive,” Interior Minister Besir Atalay said.

“We’re doing our best.”

Atalay said rescue helicopters awaited clear skies to take off to help the search by soldiers and villagers in an area of at least 12.8 square kilometres, he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said some 3,000 people were searching for the helicopter.