Christian Atsu still missing in Turkey earthquake, club doctor speaks out

For­mer Chelsea and New­cas­tle for­ward Chris­t­ian Atsu is still miss­ing after the earth­quakes in Turkey and Syria.

Atsu, the for­mer Pre­mier League star, was in the 11-sto­ry build­ing Mon­day morn­ing when a mag­ni­tude 7.7 earth­quake struck, caus­ing dev­as­tat­ing dam­age to the area. More than 11,000 peo­ple have been con­firmed dead in the quake, and res­cue efforts are continuing.

Atsu is a mem­ber of Hatais­por. Turk­ish club man­ag­er Mustafa Ozat said Atu was pulled from the rub­ble on Tues­day, the Ghana Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion said:

“The good news comes that Chris­t­ian Atu has been safe­ly res­cued from the rub­ble of a col­lapsed build­ing and is receiv­ing treat­ment. Let’s keep pray­ing for Christians.

How­ev­er, club doc­tor Gurbey Kahve­ci said the club had yet to locate the 31-year-old.

He “heard the news that he had been tak­en to Dor­tior Hos­pi­tal and they went to look for him specif­i­cal­ly, but he was not there,” Kahve­ci told reporters. “At the moment, we accept that (direc­tors) Savut Tan­er and Chris­t­ian Atu have unfor­tu­nate­ly not been found.”

Mubarak Waka­so, Atu’s inter­na­tion­al team­mate, also con­firmed he had not yet heard from him. “Fol­low­ing an update from yes­ter­day’s club that Chris­t­ian was car­ried out alive, we have yet to con­firm Chris­tian’s where­abouts,” Waka­so wrote on Instagram.

“As you can imag­ine, this is still a dev­as­tat­ing time for his fam­i­ly and we are doing every­thing in our pow­er to locate Chris­t­ian. More offi­cial infor­ma­tion will be released as it becomes available.

“Also, please refrain from spread­ing base­less infor­ma­tion as it will only hin­der the search for Chris­tians. Thank you for your prayers and support.”

Atsu’s agent, Nana Sechere, who had not spo­ken to the play­er since the dis­as­ter, received news of her sur­vival. He told Mir­ror Foot­ball, “The last time I heard from him was Sun­day mid­night. Chris­t­ian and his mates were play­ing pok­er at his friend’s apart­ment until 3:30 am.”

“It took me about 30 min­utes to get back to his apart­ment. I came back at 4am and 20 min­utes lat­er the earth­quake start­ed. At 5am I got a call from some­one from the club ask­ing if I could hear from Chris­t­ian.” No con­tact until now.