It’s was gathered from a reliable Source that a newborn baby has been rescued from the remains of a collapsed building in Syria, minutes after the girl was born under the rubble.
Footage shows the miracle newborn being carried to safety in the arms of a rescuer in Jenderes, in a northeastern region devastated by Monday’s earthquake, after she was found still tied to her mother by the umbilical cord.
While the little girl survived the ordeal, her mother is thought to have tragically died after giving birth. The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were all killed when the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Syria and neighbouring Turkey flattened the family home in the rebel-held town, Hobnob News reports.
According to Hobnob News, the pregnant mother – displaced from Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor region – went into labour during the quake which has so far killed more than 5,000 across the region already plagued by war, insurgency and refugee crises.
Video captures the moment one of a number of rescuers sprinted from the devastated four-storey building, carrying the tiny dust-covered infant to safety across a mass of twisted metal, broken concrete and barbed wire.
Another man runs after him with a dusty green blanket which he then throws to the baby’s rescuer to keep the newborn alive and warm in the sub-zero temperatures.
A crowd watched on as they witnessed both a miracle and a tragedy unfolding in front of them, one of many to unfold in Syria and Turkey in the last two days.
According to Hobnob News, the baby was taken for treatment in the nearby town of Afrin, while family members spent the next several hours recovering the bodies of her father Abdullah, mother Afraa, four siblings and an aunt.
Their bodies were laid out on the floor of an adjacent relative’s home ahead of a joint funeral that was held on Tuesday.
In the dimly lit room, Suwadi stared at the lifeless corpses and listed their names.
‘We are displaced from (the government-held eastern city of) Deir Ezzor. Abdullah is my cousin and I am married to his sister,’ he said.
The family home was one of around 50 in Jindayris that were flattened by the quake, a Hobnob News correspondent reported.
Across Syria, more than 1,600 people were killed, in addition to the more than 3,400 killed in Turkey, authorities said. Rebel-held towns cities accounted for some 800 of the dead. The overall number is expected to rise in the coming days.
Inside an incubator in the hospital in Afrin, the newborn was hooked to an intravenous drip, her body scarred, and a bandage wrapped around her left fist.
Her forehead and fingers were still blue from the biting cold as paediatrician Hani Maarouf monitored her vitals.
‘She is now stable,’ Maarouf said but noted that she had arrived in bad condition. ‘She had several bruises and lacerations over all her body.
‘She also arrived with hypothermia because of the harsh cold. We had to warm her up and administer calcium.’
