Newborn rescued from rubble in quake-hit Syrian town
JINDERIS, Syria: Residents digging through a collapsed building in the northwest Syrian town discovered a crying infant whose mother gave birth when she was buried under rubble from this week’s devastating earthquake, relatives said. And a doctor said on Tuesday.
He said the newborn girl’s umbilical cord was still attached to her mother, Afrah Abu Hadiya, who was dead. A relative, Ramzan Sleiman, told The Associated Press that the girl was the only member of her family to survive Monday’s building collapse in the small town of Jindris, near the Turkish border.
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck before dawn on Monday was followed by several aftershocks, causing widespread destruction in southern Turkey and northern Syria. Thousands have been killed, and the death toll continues to rise as more bodies are discovered. But there have also been dramatic rescues. Elsewhere in Jinderis, a young girl was found alive, buried in concrete under the rubble of her house.
The newborn was rescued on Monday afternoon, more than 10 hours after the quake struck. Rescuers dug him out, a female neighbor cut the umbilical cord, and she and others took the baby to a children’s hospital in the nearby city of Afrin, where it is placed in an incubator, Dr. Honey Maroof.
Video of the rescue circulated on social media shows moments after the baby is pulled from the rubble, as a man picks him up, with his umbilical cord still dangling, and runs away as another man brings a blanket to wrap him. throws.
He said the girl’s body temperature had dropped to 35 °C (95 °F) and she had bruises, including a large one on her back, but was in a stable condition.
Maroof said that Abu Hadiya would have been conscious during the birth and would have died soon after. They estimated that the baby had been born several hours before it was found, noting that its temperature had dropped. He said that if the baby girl had been born just before the earthquake, she would not have survived for so many hours in such cold.
“If the girl was left for one more hour, she would have died,” he said.
When the quake 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 them. Their bodies were found near the building’s entrance, said Sleiman, who arrived at the scene shortly after the newborn was discovered.
“She was found at the feet of her mother,” he said. “The girl was found alive after dust and rocks were removed.”
Marouf said the baby’s weight was 3.175 kg (7 lb), which was the average weight for a newborn, and was therefore carried almost to term. “Our only concern is the scratch on her back, and we’ll have to see if there’s a problem with her spine,” they said, adding that she was moving her legs and arms normally.
Jindris, located in a rebel-held enclave in northwest Syria, was hit hard by the quake, with dozens of buildings collapsing.
Abu Hadiya and her family were among the millions of Syrians who fled other parts of the country to rebel-held territory. They were originally from Khasham village in eastern Deir Ezzor province, but left after the Daesh group captured their village in 2014, said a relative who identified himself as Saleh al-Badran.
Sleiman said that in 2018, the family moved to Jindris after the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, an umbrella for several rebel groups, captured the city from US-backed Kurdish-led fighters.
On Tuesday, Abu Hadiya and the girl’s father, Abdullah Turki Malihan, were buried along with their four other children at a cemetery on the outskirts of Jindris.
Back inside the town, rescue operations were still underway in their building in the hope of finding survivors.
The city witnessed yet another dramatic rescue on Monday evening when a child was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building. Video from the White Helmets, the emergency service in the area, shows a rescuer digging through crushed concrete amid crumpled metal until a little girl named Noor appears. The girl, still half-dead, looks up in bewilderment as they tell her, “Daddy is here, don’t be afraid. … talk to your dad, talk.
A rescuer cradled her head in his hands and gently wiped the dust around her eyes before lifting her out.
The quake sparked new devastation in the opposition-held region centered on Syria’s Idlib province, already battered by years of war and an influx of people displaced by the country’s civil war, which began in 2011 .
Monday’s earthquake killed hundreds across the region, and the death toll continued to rise and hundreds were still believed to be buried under the rubble. According to the White Helmets, known as the region’s civil defense, the quake completely or partially collapsed more than 730 buildings and damaged thousands more in the region.
The White Helmets have years of experience digging victims out of buildings crushed by Russian warplanes or bombardment by Syrian government forces. Earthquakes are a new disaster for them.
“They are both a catastrophe – a catastrophe that has been going on for 12 years and the perpetrator has not been held accountable, and it is a natural disaster,” said Munir Mustafa, deputy head of the White Helmets.
Asked if there was any difference between the rescue work during the earthquake and the war, he said, “We cannot compare death with death…what we are seeing today is death upon death.”