Newborn baby rescued from under rubble in Syria still attached to mother by umbilical cord

Among the ruins of a building in Jindires, a city in the northwest of Syria hit hard by earthquake, rescue teams found a newborn baby under the rubble and still connected to the deceased mother by the umbilical cord. The girl is the only survivor of a family in which all members died when their four-story building collapsed. In this town near the border with Turkey, emergency teams found the bodies of his father, Abdallah Mleihan, his mother, Aafra, his three sisters, his brother and his aunt on Monday, 6. “We were looking for Abdallah and his family. First we found his sister, then his wife, then Abdallah, they were together against each other,” a relative of the family, Khalil Sawadi, told AFP, still in shock. “Then we heard a noise and we dug. We cleaned the place and found this little girl, thank God”, he says. The newborn still had the umbilical cord attached to her mother. “We cut it, and my cousin took the baby to the hospital,” she continues. In a video circulating on social media, a man is seen carrying a naked, dust-covered baby through the rubble, with the umbilical cord still dangling. In the icy cold, another throws a blanket over the girl. The baby was taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Afrin, where she was placed in an incubator and given vitamins. “She arrived with numb limbs from the cold, her blood pressure was low. We provided first aid and put her on an infusion because she had not been fed for a long time,” explained doctor Hani Maaruf to AFP. The girl has bruises, but her state of health is stable, according to the doctor. “She was probably born seven hours after the earthquake,” he adds. She weighs 3.175 kg, so she was born on time, she says.

With few resources, rescuers took hours to remove the rubble to remove the bodies of other family members. They were placed side by side in a relative’s house, covered with sheets, awaiting burial. The family fled the unstable region of Deir Ezzor further east, believing they would be safe in Jindires, a town controlled since 2018 by Turkish forces and pro-Turkish rebel groups. About 50 houses collapsed in this Syrian city, relatively close to the earthquake’s epicenter in Turkey, according to an AFP correspondent. The earthquake left more than 5,000 dead in Turkey and Syria, according to the latest figures, which keep rising. According to the White Helmets, an emergency service that operates in Syrian rebel areas, more than 200 buildings were destroyed in this sector. This Tuesday, this group implored international organizations to help these devastated and forgotten regions. “Time is pressing. Hundreds of people are trapped under the rubble,” he warned.

*With information from the AFP agency