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Aya, the so-called 'miracle baby', was rescued from underneath a destroyed house, with her umbilical cord still tied to her dead mother, following a deadly earthquake that tore the Turkish-Syrian border. DPA/PA Images
Syria
Newborn baby in Syria rescued after mother gives birth while buried in earthquake debris
The girl was found under rubble with her umbilical cord still connected to her mother.
HEARTRENDING SCENES OF a newborn plucked alive from the has laid bare the human cost of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey that by this morning had claimed over 11,200 lives.
Residents in a northwest Syrian town discovered a crying baby whose mother appears to have given birth to her while buried underneath the rubble of a five-story apartment building.
The newborn girl was found buried under the debris with her umbilical cord still connected to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was found dead, they said.
The baby was the only member of her family to survive from the building collapse on Monday in the small town of Jinderis, next to the Turkish border, Ramadan Sleiman, a relative, said.
The rescuers found the baby in the afternoon, more than 10 hours after the earthquake struck.
A female neighbour cut the cord, and she and others rushed with the baby to a children’s hospital in the nearby town of Afrin, where she has been kept in an incubator, said the physician treating her, Dr Hani Maarouf.
The baby’s body temperature had fallen and she had bruises, including a large one on her back, but she is in stable condition, he said.
Dr Maarouf said he believed the baby had been born about three hours before being found, given how far her temperature had dropped.
The infant faces a difficult future as the sole survivor among her immediate family. The rest were buried together in a mass grave on yesterday.
Monday’s pre-dawn 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by multiple aftershocks, caused widespread destruction across southern Turkey and northern Syria.
Jinderis, located in the rebel-held enclave of northwest Syria, was hard hit in the quake, with multiple buildings destroyed.
The town saw another dramatic rescue on Monday evening, when a toddler was pulled alive from the wreckage of a collapsed building.
Video from the White Helmets, the emergency service in the region, shows a rescuer digging through crushed concrete amid twisted metal until the little girl, named Nour, appeared.
The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.
Monday’s earthquake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.
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