A newborn baby who was found still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother and pulled alive from the rubble of a home in northern Syria following a deadly earthquake, receives medical care at a clinic in Afrin, on February 7, 2023. Photo: RAMI AL SAYED/AFP via Getty Images
A baby girl born under collapsed rubble has been saved by rescuers in Jindayris, a town in north-west Syria, close to the Turkish border. The newborn’s mother is believed to have gone into labour shortly after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake collapsed their home. The baby was the only person in her family to survive the destruction – her parents and four siblings were killed in the incident. More than 11,000 people have died since a powerful earthquake struck the border region between southern Turkey and northern Syria in the early hours of Monday. A second quake struck the country around 9 hours later, with many people still trapped under the rubble of the first. The first earthquake’s epicentre was near the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. Doctors say the newborn baby is in stable condition at a local hospital where she was taken by extended family members who rushed to the scene following news of the collapse. "We heard a voice while we were digging," Khalil al-Suwadi told the Associated Foreign Press. "We cleared the dust and found the baby with the umbilical cord, so we cut it and my cousin took her to the hospital.”Hani Maarouf, a paediatrician, said she was brought to hospital with "several bruises and lacerations over all her body," the BBC reported.
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