The Lebanese Rescue Team continues its search operations under the rubble of the “Ozahan” Hotel in Hatay, Turkey, in search of the Lebanese youth, Mohammed Al-Mohammed.
It seems that it is not easy to reach Muhammad al-Mohammed’s room, which was number 101 and is located on the first floor of the hotel building, which witnessed great damage after the earthquake that struck Antakya.
And 3 hours before the earthquake occurred, Muhammad called his fiancée Duaa in Lebanon and told her: “Here I am closing the bag and preparing to return to Lebanon.” This is what Duaa the bride said, who was happy to meet her expected fiancé after he sent her from his phone the last message bearing a picture of the two engagement rings. He had bought them from Antioch.
A team went to a Lebanese mission led by the Lebanese youth, Youssef Al-Mallah, last Monday (known for his tremendous efforts in search operations in Lebanon), along with 12 young men, in order to search for Muhammad Al-Mohammed and another Lebanese whose body the Mallah found on Tuesday in the same hotel.
As for Muhammad, who was occupying Room No. 101 on the first floor in the direction of the main road, according to what he told his fiancée, no trace of him has appeared until this moment.
His brother, Mansour Al-Muhammad, told Sky News Arabia: “We hope to find Muhammad alive. We have not lost hope. My brother and my cousin came from Germany to search for him, but no one was able to find a trace of him. We had difficulty persuading the Turkish relief teams to complete the search in the rubble.” The hotel refused, announcing the termination of the search due to the difficulty and seriousness of the situation.
He added, “We shouted to Lebanon, and the young man, Youssef Al-Mallah, responded to our appeal and volunteered to come to Turkey with a group of his comrades working in the civil defense apparatus to help us, and we are still waiting.”
Youssef Al-Mallah is known for his infinite audacity in the rescue incidents he carried out in Lebanon, and he is a volunteer in the Lebanese Civil Defense, and he was able to convince the Turkish authorities to allow him to search for the room of the young Muhammad among the rubble.
The navigator told Sky News Arabia: “It is not easy what we are doing, and I will not return to Lebanon without Muhammad. Immediately after starting the search, my companions and I found the body of the Lebanese youth, Elias Haddad, and the body of a Syrian girl.”
Al-Mallah pointed out that “Haddad’s body returned Thursday to his hometown in Lebanon via the airport.”
Al-Mallah added, “My companions and I dug a 7-meter-long tunnel down to the bottom of the demolished hotel to reach the room whose features and stones overlap with the stones of other nearby buildings.”
He continued, “We will not lose hope. We work day and night in difficult conditions and without professional equipment to save time. We went underground, and the scene is frightening. The destroyed buildings are intertwined with each other, and the collapsed hotel building tilts several centimeters daily, as if it will fall permanently.”
The navigator described the situation as follows: “The situation in which we are working is very dangerous, but we will not despair to reach Muhammad’s room.”
He concluded, “The Turkish authorities stopped us from working for an hour during the aftershock on Thursday night, so we went back to the tunnels again, publicly finding traces of Room No. 101.