A construction worker is astonished to be alive after a steel bar impaled his face, stopping just inches from his brain, in a building site fall.

Gruesome images show victim Celal Sayar lying on a hospital bed with the bar protruding from his right cheek.

X-ray images dated to 19th November show how the 39-year-old was lucky to survive after the bar pierced his cheekbone, penetrating up behind his eyes just inches from his brain.

Celal took the horror tumble at a construction site in Giresun, north-eastern Turkey, impaling himself on the bar.

He was first taken to a local hospital but was then transferred to the larger Training and Research Hospital in Samsun nearly three hours away by car.

The bar – a concrete bracing rebar – was successfully removed from his face by surgeons and Celal was then treated in the intensive care unit.

His current condition is not clear and it is also unclear if he has been discharged.

One worker died every four hours in an occupational accident in Turkey last year, according to a report by the Workers’ Health and Work Safety Assembly.

The second-highest number of deaths – 335 – occurred in the construction sector.