Rescue teams are looking for survivors of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday that caused more than 5,300 deaths in Turkey and Syria, in a battle against time, because after three days the chances of staying alive under the rubble of the thousands of buildings demolished by the quake are minimal.
More than 24,000 people (to which teams sent by Germany, Italy or Mexico, among other countries, are added) search the ruins in search of signs of life, a task made difficult by the freezing temperatures and the more than 200 aftershocks of the tremor, which they can topple unstable structures that remain standing.
Turkish authorities expect the death toll to rise in cities devastated by the quake, but some rescues offer some hope, albeit bittersweet, in the immense tragedy.
In the Syrian town of Jindires, a pregnant woman lost her life trapped in the rubble of a building collapsed by the quake before rescuers could save her, but her newborn daughter survived.
A video released by rescue teams shows the baby, still
attached to her mother by the umbilical cord,
being rescued by a man running from the metal and concrete remains of a four-story building.
The mother, a Syrian woman displaced from the eastern region of Deir Ezzor by the civil war that has plagued the country for years, went into labor during the quake, the AFP news agency reported.
[Earthquake exacerbates suffering of displaced Syrians]
The baby is the only survivor of her family
: all the others died when their house collapsed in this city controlled by rebels against the Syrian regime.
The girl was taken to the nearby town of Afrin to receive treatment, while the bodies of her mother, Afraa, were extracted from the rubble;
her father, Abdullah;
her four brothers and an aunt, according to the aforementioned agency.
A newborn who was found still tied to her mother by the umbilical cord and pulled alive from the rubble of a house in northern Syria after the deadly earthquake, receives medical attention at a clinic in Afrin, February 7, 2023.RAMI AL SAYED / AFP via Getty Images
Inside an incubator, the newborn was attached, her body scarred and her left fist bandaged. "She's stable now," said pediatrician Hani Maarouf, but she arrived at the hospital badly bruised: her forehead and fingers were still blue from the He was cold, he also had several bruises and wounds all over his body.
[The image symbolizing the great destruction caused by a powerful earthquake in Turkey]
"She also arrived with hypothermia due to the intense cold. We had to warm her up and give her calcium," added the doctor.
Jindires is a town in northern Syria, in the Afrin district of Aleppo Governorate and lies on the banks of the Afrin River.
It was seized by Turkey and its Syrian rebel proxies in a 2018 offensive that drove Kurdish forces out of the region.
In Syria, at least 812 people have been killed and at least 1,449 injured, according to the Ministry of Health.
In rebel-held Syrian territories, more than 790 people were killed and more than 2,200 wounded, according to the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense and medical group operating in those areas.