A baby born under rubble was saved from the wreckage of her family home in northern Syria on Tuesday morning as stories of miracle rescues emerged in the aftermath of Monday’s catastrophic earthquake.
The baby girl, whose umbilical cord was still attached as rescue teams carried her out of the collapsed building, was rushed to a nearby hospital.
The manager of the hospital later told the Telegraph that while she was in a really bad state when she first came in, she was getting better by the hour and her extended relatives are there with her.
Neither of her parents nor her four siblings survived, according to locals who witnessed her rescue in Jandaris, a small town in northern Syria. An estimated 25 per cent of the town was reduced to rubble in the disaster.
A widely-shared video showed the new-born baby being cradled and taken to safety past rubble and diggers.
In the Syrian village of Qatma, three small, dust-covered toes poking past broken iron rods in a mound of rubble offered a glimmer of hope to Syrian rescuers who raced to rescue a young boy.Ahmed, a child of about four or five, was trapped by a giant concrete slab as his home crumbled when the earthquake struck in the early hours of Monday morning.In a video released by the Syrian White Helmets, rescuers can be seen shouting instructions over the hammering of a pneumatic drill as they try to free him from the debris. Against the odds, they pull the boy free.Ahmed is visibly in pain, scratched and caked in blood as he is cradled by a rescue worker and carried to safety. He is later seen on a stretcher, fitted with an oxygen mask as an ambulance rushes him to hospital. A medic by his side quietly comforts him with the word “yalla”, or “come on.”Little is known about Ahmed or his family, beyond reports that they had already been displaced to the village of Qatma, north of Aleppo, by Syria’s brutal war.
Ahmed, a displaced child, was rescued from the ruins of his home in the village of Qatma, north of #Aleppo, #Syria. The family's house was destroyed by today's devastating #earthquake. pic.twitter.com/Ec4pommcLc— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) February 6, 2023
Tragically, many children could not be saved from the devastation of the worst earthquake to hit the Turkish-Syrian border in a century.In a heartbreaking video from Jindires, northern Syria, a father is seen dropping to his knees and sobbing over the body of his baby son, kissing his forehead as bystanders try to offer comfort.
In the chaotic aftermath of the disaster, trapped victims began using social media to plead for help, prompting Kagan Sarikaya, a Turkish political scientist, to collect the information and create a map of their location, reported the Middle East Eye.
For some families, social media posts may have saved their lives. “Help, we are under the rubble, my mother and my brother,” said one man in Twitter post, pinpointing his address. As the post went viral, the family was rescued by neighbours.