A baby girl born under the rubble of the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey is treated inside an incubator at a children’s hospital in the town of Afrin in Syria’s Aleppo province on Tuesday. Residents in a town in northwestern Syria discovered a crying infant whose mother gave birth to him while buried under the rubble of a five-story apartment building.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
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A baby girl born under the rubble of the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey is treated inside an incubator at a children’s hospital in the town of Afrin in Syria’s Aleppo province on Tuesday. Residents in a town in northwestern Syria discovered a crying infant whose mother gave birth to him while buried under the rubble of a five-story apartment building.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
JINDERIS, Syria — Residents digging through a collapsed building in a town in northwestern Syria discovered a crying infant whose mother appeared to have given birth to him as he was buried under rubble from this week. Terrible earthquakerelatives and a doctor said on Tuesday.
They said the baby girl’s umbilical cord was still attached to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who had passed away. The baby was the only member of her family to survive Monday’s building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, by the Turkish border, Ramadan Sleiman, a relative, told The Associated Press.
Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by multiple aftershocks, caused widespread destruction across southern Turkey and northern Syria. Thousands of people have died, the toll is increasing as more bodies are discovered. But dramatic rescues have also occurred. Elsewhere in Jinderis, a young girl found aliveburied in concrete under the rubble of her house.
The newborn baby was rescued on Monday afternoon, more than 10 hours after the quake struck. After rescuers took the baby out, a woman next door cut the umbilical cord, and she and others rushed the baby to a children’s hospital in the nearby town of Afrin, where he was kept in hospital. incubator, the doctor treating the baby, Dr. Hani Maarouf.
Video of the rescue going viral on social media shows moments after the baby was pulled from the wreckage, as a man picked him up, the umbilical cord still dangling, and ran away as a another man threw him a blanket to wrap you in.
He said the baby’s body temperature had dropped to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and she had bruises, including a large one on her back, but she was in a stable condition.
Maarouf said Abu Hadiya must have been conscious during the birth and died shortly after. He estimated the baby was born a few hours before it was found, because her temperature had dropped. If the girl had been born just before the earthquake, he said, she wouldn’t have survived many hours in such cold.
“If the girl was left alone for another hour, she would die,” he said.
When the quake struck just before dawn on Monday, Abu Hadiya, her husband and four children apparently tried to jump out of their apartment building, but the building collapsed on them. Sleiman, who arrived at the scene shortly after the infant was discovered, said their bodies were found near the entrance of the building.
“She was found at her mother’s feet,” he said. “After the dust and rocks were cleared, the girl was found alive.”
People on Tuesday search through the rubble of collapsed buildings where a newborn baby girl was found in the town of Jinderis.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
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Ghaith Alsayed/AP
People on Tuesday search through the rubble of collapsed buildings where a newborn baby girl was found in the town of Jinderis.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
Maarouf said the baby weighed 3,175 kilograms (7 pounds), the average weight of a newborn, and was therefore carried close to full term. “Our only concern is the bruise on her back, and we have to see if there’s something wrong with her spinal cord,” he said, adding that she had moved her legs and arms. Normal.
Jinderis, located in a rebel-held area in northwestern Syria, was hit hard by the quake, with dozens of buildings collapsing.
Abu Hadiya and her family are among millions of Syrians fleeing to rebel-held territory from other parts of the country. They were from the village of Khsham in eastern Deir el-Zour province, but left in 2014 after the Islamic State group captured their village, said a relative who identified himself as Saleh al-Badran.
In 2018, the family moved to Jinderis after the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, an umbrella for several rebel groups, captured the town from US-backed Kurdish fighters, Sleiman said. .
On Tuesday, Abu Hadiya and the girl’s father, Abdullah Turki Mleihan, along with their four other children were laid to rest in a cemetery on the outskirts of Jinderis.
Back inside town, rescue operations are still going on in their building in the hope of finding survivors.
The town saw another dramatic rescue on Monday night, when a toddler was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building. Video from White Helmets, an emergency service in the area, shows a lifeguard digging through crushed concrete amid twisted metal until the little girl, named Nour, appears. The girl, still half-buried, looked up in shock as they told her: “Daddy’s here, don’t be afraid. …Tell me, tell me.”
A lifeguard held her head in his hands and gently wiped the dust around her eyes before she was dragged outside.
The quake has caused renewed devastation in the opposition-held area, centered on Syria’s Idlib province, which has been ravaged by years of war and strained by an influx of migrants from the civil war. of the country, starting in 2011.
Monday’s quake killed hundreds in the area and the toll continues to rise with hundreds believed to be still missing under the rubble. The quake completely or partially collapsed more than 730 buildings and damaged thousands more in the territory, according to the White Helmets, as the area’s civilian defenses became aware.
The White Helmets have years of experience in digging victims out of buildings crushed by Russian warplanes or Syrian government forces. An earthquake is a new disaster for them.
“Both are disasters – a disaster that has been going on for 12 years and the perpetrator is not responsible, and this is a natural disaster,” said White Helmets deputy leader Munir Mustafa.
When asked if there is a difference between rescue work during an earthquake and during a war, he said: “We cannot compare death to death… What we are witnessing. today is death on top of death.”
