A newborn baby girl, still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord, was rescued from the rubble of a four-story building that collapsed in Jindires, northwestern Syria, as a result of of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the northern region of that country and Turkeyleaving more than 5,000 fatalities and tens of thousands injured.
According to a dispatch from the AFP news agency, the baby is the only survivor of the family who lived in the collapsed building, as the rescue teams previously found “the corpses of his father, Abdalá Mleihan, his mother, Aafra, his three sisters, his brother and his aunt”.
“We were looking for Abu Rudayna (nickname for Abdalá) and his family. First we found his sister, then his wife, then Abu Rudayna, they were together against each other”explained to the agency a relative of the family, Khalil Sawadi, still shaken.
The finding of the baby
“Then we heard a noise and we dug (…), we cleaned the place and we found this little girl, praise God,” he added, explaining that they cut the umbilical cord, covered her with a blanket and transferred her to a hospital in the city. near Afrin, where she was put 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 perfusion because she had been without food for too long,” explained doctor Hani Maaruf.
He also specified that the little girl weighs 3,175 kilograms and has bruises, but her condition is stable, and estimated that “she was probably born seven hours after the earthquake.”
In this Syrian town, very close to the border with Turkey, about 50 houses collapsed.
According to the latest official balances, the earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale left more than 5,000 dead in Syria and Turkey and tens of thousands injured.
