January 25, 2010, Updated September 24, 2012

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Home Front Command teams rescued Emmannuel Buso, a 22-year-old man, from a three-storey building near the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince on Friday, nearly 10 days after the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti on January 12.

US and French doctors called for assistance to rescue the man from a tunnel, and within half an hour the Israeli team was “able to release him whole and healthy,” rescue team member Major Zohar Moshe was quoted as saying.

Buso was being treated at the IDF field hospital and his condition was reported as stable. He said that he survived 10 days under the rubble by drinking his own urine and spent most of his time in a listless daze, at times dreaming of his mother and thinking that he had in fact died.

International search teams have rescued 132 people since the quake occurred, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Meanwhile, thousands braved new aftershocks to queue for the first major food handouts in central Port-au-Prince, as others scrambled for a place on free buses out of the squalid city.

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