A moving and heartbreaking video has shown a newborn baby born alive being pulled from the rubble of a home in Northern Syria. Extended family members pulled the baby out alive from the rubble of a home in the town of Jandaris, after the newborn was found still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother.
The poignant clip, which was widely shared online, shows rescue teams carrying the baby girl from a collapsed building past rubble and diggers, before she was later rushed to hospital. Agence-France Press (AFP) journalist Layal Abou Rahal, who reported on the story, said her mother and father both sadly died in Monday’s massive earthquake, according to a relative.
We confirmed earlier today this baby girl, miraculously pulled out alive from under the rubble where she was born, has survived. She was found still attached to her mother’s umbilical cord. Her hometown Jandaris is estimated to be 25% reduced to rubble. Neither parent survived pic.twitter.com/TnVEPBhSMo
— Abbie Cheeseman (@cheesemanab) February 7, 2023
News of the infant’s survival amid unbearable tragedy came as other stories of miraculous rescues emerged in the aftermath of Monday’s mammoth earthquake which tore through Northern Syria and Southern Turkey.
Speaking to The Telegraph, the manager of the hospital where the baby girl was brought said that while she was in a really bad state when she first got there, she was improving by the hour and her extended relatives are there with her.
Locals who witnessed the rescue in the small town of Jandaris said that neither of her parents nor her four siblings survived. It is estimated that 25 per cent of the town has been reduced to rubble following the catastrophic natural disaster.
AFP later released an image of the baby, the only survivor in her immediate family, recovering at the hospital.
Incredible story from Syria today: family members pulled a newborn baby alive from the rubble, after finding her still tied to her dead mother by her umbilical cord.
She is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest were all killed, via @AFP.https://t.co/Rv9zphg5rb
— Aya Iskandarani (@Aya_Isk) February 7, 2023
Another remarkable video from Turkey showed a baby and her mother being rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, Turkey’s worst-hit province. Miraculously, the mother and baby girl were found alive a full 29 hours after the first of two powerful and devastating earthquakes hit the city.
Turkey: Baby girl & her mother rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay more than a day after an earthquake hit the region.#Turkiye #earthquakes #earthquakeinturkey #TurkeyEarthquake pic.twitter.com/Rs7kFtMNZH
— Annu Kaushik (@AnnuKaushik253) February 7, 2023
The death toll has so far passed 7,200, though up to 20,000 people may be dead, as numbers continue to rise, according to reports from Turkey and Syria.
According to Turkish vice-president, Fuat Oktay, more than 8,000 people have so far been pulled from debris in Turkey. An estimated 380,000 people have taken refuge in the country’s hotels, government shelters, shopping centres, stadiums, mosques, and community centres.
Meanwhile, more than 1,600 people have been reported dead so far in Northern Syria following the Kahramanmaras earthquake, which has also devastated Southern Turkey. The war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria is believed to be one of the worst-impacted places, with emergency rescue teams saying that many buildings have been destroyed, and people remain trapped under the rubble. Aleppo is home to millions of refugees who have been displaced by the civil war.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake happened at 04:17 local time (01:17 GMT) on Monday at a depth of 17.9km (11 miles) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep. Just twelve hours later, a second earthquake, which was nearly as big, struck 130km (80 miles) to the north.
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