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 his father, Abdalá Mleihan, his mother, Aafra, his three sisters, his brother and his 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.
The body of one of the relatives of the baby born under the rubble.
AFP photo
in the middle of the cold
"Then we heard a noise and we dug (...),
we cleaned the place and we found this little girl, praise God
," he says.
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.
The baby was taken to the hospital in the nearby city of Afrin
, where she was placed in an incubator and given vitamins.
A newborn girl was found buried under rubble with her umbilical cord still connected to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya.
AP Photo
"
She arrived with her limbs numb from the cold
, her blood pressure had dropped. We gave her first aid and put her under perfusion because she had gone too long without being fed," Dr. Hani Maaruf explained to 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.
The family
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.
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 6,000 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 to international organizations to come to the aid of these damaged and forgotten regions.
"Time is short. Hundreds of people are trapped in the rubble," she warned.
AFP Agency
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