Direct Earthquake in Turkey and Syria, last minute
Among the ruins of a building in Jindires, a town in northwest Syria hard hit by the quake, rescuers found a baby,
born under the rubble and still attached to her deceased mother by the umbilical cord
.
This girl is the only survivor of a family in which all the members died when their four-story building collapsed.
In this town near the border with Turkey, emergency teams found the bodies of her father Abdullah Mleihan, her mother Aafra, her three sisters, her brother and her aunt on Monday. .
"We were looking for Abu Rudayna (Abdalá's nickname) and his family. First we found his sister, then his wife, then Abu Rudayna, they were together against each other," a family relative, Khalil Sawadi, told AFP. , still shocked.
"Then we heard a noise and we dug (...), we cleaned the place and we found this little girl, praise God," he says.
The newborn, admitted to the hospital, with small injuries. AFP
The newborn
still had the umbilical cord attached to her mother
.
"We cut it and my cousin took the baby to the hospital," she continues.
In a video circulating on social media, a man is seen carrying a naked, dust-coated baby through the rubble, its umbilical cord still dangling.
In the icy cold, another throws a blanket over the creature.
"Time is short"
The baby was taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Afrin, where she was placed in an incubator and given vitamins.
"She arrived with her limbs numb from the cold, her blood pressure had dropped. We gave her first aid and
put her under infusion because she had gone too long without being fed
," Dr. Hani Maaruf told AFP.
The little girl has bruises, but her condition is stable, according to the doctor.
"She was probably born seven hours after the quake,"
she adds.
She weighs 3,175 kg, so she was born on schedule, she points out.
With their few means, it took the rescuers hours to remove the rubble to extract the bodies of the rest of the family.
They were placed side by side in a relative's house, covered with sheets, awaiting the funeral.
The baby was rescued about 7 hours after birth.AFP
In the room, Khalil Sawadi lists their names.
"We are displaced from Deir Ezzor, Abdullah is my cousin and I am married to his sister," he says.
The family had fled the volatile Deir Ezzor region further east,
believing they would be safe in Jindires
, a town controlled since 2018 by Turkish forces and pro-Turkish rebel groups.
Some fifty houses collapsed in this Syrian town, relatively close to the epicenter of the earthquake in Turkey, according to an AFP correspondent.
The earthquake has caused more than 5,000 deaths in Turkey and Syria, according to the latest balances, which do not stop increasing.
According to the White Helmets, an emergency service that operates in the Syrian rebel areas, more than 200 buildings have been left to the ground in this sector.
This group pleaded Tuesday with international organizations
to come to the aid of these damaged and forgotten regions
.
"Time is pressing. Hundreds of people are trapped in the rubble," he warned.
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