Tuesday 07 February 2023
In Syria earthquake area Mother dies in childbirth under rubble – baby rescued
The newborn baby is now being treated in the hospital.
(Photo: AFP)
The terrible tremors in Syria cause houses to collapse. A baby is born under the rubble in the village of Janairis. The newborn girl is the only family member to survive after a dramatic rescue.
It is a terrible start in life and at the same time a miracle: a newborn girl was rescued from the rubble of a house in the earthquake region in north-west Syria. Her umbilical cord was still connected to her mother, who died in the disaster. However, the baby was born an orphan. His father, his three sisters, his brother and his aunt could only be recovered dead from the rubble.
The family’s four-storey house in the village of Janairis in the Afrin region collapsed due to the strong earthquake on Monday. Relatives then searched for the buried family. “Then we heard a noise and we started digging,” one of them, Chalil Sawadi, told AFP. “We cleared debris and found this little one, praise God.”
The newborn was still connected by the umbilical cord to its mother, who will never know it now. “We cut the umbilical cord and my cousin took the baby to the hospital,” says Sawadi, describing the wonderful rescue.
In stable condition
A video circulated online of a man holding up a naked, dust-covered baby with the remains of his umbilical cord still hanging from his belly amidst the rubble. In the face of freezing temperatures, someone brings a blanket to wrap the newborn in. The baby was taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Afrin.
There the little one was placed in an incubator and given infusions of vitamins. “She was brought in with her limbs stiff from the cold and her blood pressure had dropped,” her doctor, Hani Maaruf, told AFP. “We did first aid and gave her IVs because she hadn’t had milk for a long time.”
The baby suffered bruises, but the condition of the 3175 gram newborn is stable, says the doctor. According to his estimation, the baby was born about seven hours after the earthquake.
It took hours to rescue the other family members. Their bodies were lined up in front of a neighboring house and covered with cloths of different colors. Sawadi lists the names of the deceased and reports on the already difficult fate of the family, who had to flee their home region.
call for more help
The child’s family had fled the unstable Deir Essor region further east because of the civil war, hoping to be safe in Janairis, a place controlled by the Turkish army and pro-Turkish rebels. But for many people, Janairis became a death trap. About 50 buildings collapsed there. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Turkish-Syrian border area early Monday morning. Thousands of victims have already been recovered in the two countries.
The situation of the survivors in Syria is desperate. The country is already scarred by the civil war that began in 2011 and is divided into areas controlled by the government in Damascus and territories ruled by rebels. International aid for the earthquake victims on the Syrian side of the border is therefore starting very hesitantly.
The White Helmets involved in the rescue work urged urgent humanitarian aid from abroad. “Time is of the essence,” said the non-governmental organization. “Hundreds of people are still buried under the rubble.”
Those: ntv.de
Rami Al Sayed, AFP
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