A girl born under the rubble caused by an earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey receives treatment inside an incubator at a children’s hospital in the city of Afrin in Aleppo province in Syria on Tuesday. Residents in a northwestern Syrian city have discovered a crying baby whose mother gave birth to her while she was buried under the rubble of a five-story apartment building.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
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Ghaith Alsayed/AP
A girl born under the rubble caused by an earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey receives treatment inside an incubator at a children’s hospital in the city of Afrin in Aleppo province in Syria on Tuesday. Residents in a northwestern Syrian city have discovered a crying baby whose mother gave birth to her while she was buried under the rubble of a five-story apartment building.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
JINDERIS, Syria — Residents digging through collapsed buildings in a northwestern Syrian town have discovered a crying baby whose mother appears to have given birth to her while buried under the rubble of this week’s devastating earthquake, relatives said. and a doctor on Tuesday.
The newborn girl’s umbilical cord was still connected to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was dead, they said. The baby was the only member of her family to survive Monday’s building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, near the Turkish border, Ramadan Sleiman, a relative, told The Associated Press.
Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake before dawn, followed by multiple aftershocks, caused widespread destruction in southern Turkey and northern Syria. Thousands have been killed, with the toll rising as more bodies are discovered. But dramatic rescues also took place. Elsewhere in Jinderis, girl was found aliveburied in the concrete under the rubble of her house.
The newborn was rescued on Monday afternoon, more than 10 hours after the earthquake occurred. After rescuers dug her out, a female neighbor cut the cord, and she and others rushed the baby to a children’s hospital in the nearby town of Afrin, where she was kept in an incubator, the attending physician said. to the baby, Dr. Hani Maarouf.
A video of the rescue is circulating on social media showing the moments after the baby was removed from the rubble, as a man picks her up, the umbilical cord still hanging, and she runs as another man throws a blanket over her. wrap it in it.
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 was in stable condition, he said.
Abu Hadiya should have been conscious during the birth and must have died soon after, Maarouf said. He calculated that the baby was born several hours before it was found, due to the amount its temperature had dropped. If the girl had been born just before the earthquake, she would not have survived for so many hours in the cold, he said.
“If the girl had been left for another hour, she would have died,” he said.
When the earthquake struck before dawn on Monday, Abu Hadiya, her husband and four children apparently tried to get out of their apartment building, but the structure collapsed on top of them. Their bodies were found near the entrance to the building, said Sleiman, who arrived at the scene just after the newborn was discovered.
“She was found at her mother’s feet,” he said. “After the dust and rocks were removed the girl was found alive.”
People on Tuesday search through the rubble of a collapsed building where a newborn girl was found in the town of Jinderis.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
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People on Tuesday search through the rubble of a collapsed building where a newborn girl was found in the town of Jinderis.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
Maarouf said the baby weighed 3.175 kilograms (7 pounds), an average weight for a newborn, and was therefore carried almost to term. “Our only concern is the bruise on her back, and we want to see if there is a problem with the spine,” he said, adding that she was moving her legs and arms normally.
Jinderis, located in the rebel-held enclave of northwestern Syria, was hit hard by the earthquake, with dozens of buildings collapsing.
Abu Hadiya and her family were among the millions of Syrians who fled to rebel-held territory from other parts of the country. They were originally 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 city from US-backed Kurdish-led fighters, Sleiman said.
On Tuesday, Abu Hadiya and the girl’s father Abdullah Turki Mleihan, along with their other four children were laid to rest in a cemetery on the outskirts of Jinderis.
Back inside the city, rescue operations were still going on in their buildings in the hope of finding survivors.
The city saw another dramatic rescue on Monday night, when a small boy was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building. A video from the White Helmets, the emergency service in the region, shows a rescuer digging through crushed concrete among twisted metal until the little girl, named Nour, appeared. The girl, who is still half buried, looks up bewildered as they tell her, “Dad is here, don’t be afraid. … Talk to your dad, talk.”
Rescuer cradled her head in his hands and tenderly brushed the dust from around her eyes before she was taken out.
The earthquake led to fresh devastation in the opposition-held area, centered on the Syrian province of Idlib, which was already battered by years of war and fueled by the influx of people displaced by the country’s civil war. , which started in 2011.
Monday’s earthquake killed hundreds around the area, and the toll was steadily rising with hundreds still believed to be lost under the rubble. The earthquake completely or partially demolished more than 730 buildings and damaged thousands more in the territory, according to the White Helmets, as the area’s civil defense is known.
The White Helmets have years of experience extricating victims from buildings crushed by bombing by Russian warplanes or Syrian government forces. An earthquake is a new disaster for them.
“Both are catastrophes — a catastrophe that has been going on for 12 years and the criminal has not been held accountable, and this is a natural catastrophe,” said the deputy head of Elmi l’Bojod, Munir Mustafa.
Asked if there was a difference between the rescue work in the earthquake and during the war, he said, “We cannot compare death with death… What we are witnessing today is death upon death.”
