Mother dead on umbilical cord: Syrian baby saved hours after earthquake The new economic policy is grand, green and mean

Shrouded in dust and still connected with the umbilical cord to his deceased mother: a baby has been rescued from the rubble of a house in the earthquake zone in northwestern Syria. The newborn girl is the only survivor of her family. His father, his three sisters, his brother and his aunt could only be pulled out of the rubble dead.

The family’s four-storey house in Janairis village in the Afrin region collapsed on Monday due to the strong earthquake. Relatives then searched for the buried family. “Then we heard a noise and we started digging,” one of them, Khalil Sawadi, told AFP on Tuesday. “We cleaned up the rubble and found this little one, praise God.”

The newborn was still connected by the umbilical cord to its mother, who will never know now. “We cut the umbilical cord and my cousin took the baby to the hospital,” Sawadi describes the amazing rescue.

A video circulated on social media of a man holding a naked, cloth-covered baby in the rubble with the remnants of his umbilical cord still hanging from his stomach. In freezing temperatures, someone brings a blanket to wrap the newborn.

The baby was taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Afrin. There the little one was placed in an incubator and given vitamin infusions. “She was brought in with her limbs stiff from the cold, her blood pressure had dropped,” her doctor Hani Maaruf told AFP. “We performed 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 3,175 gram newborn is stable, the doctor says. According to his estimate, the baby was born about seven hours after the earthquake.

It took hours to save the other family members. Their bodies were lined up in front of a neighboring house and covered with different colored cloths. Sawadi lists the names of the deceased and reports on the already difficult fate of the family, who had to flee their home region.

Because of the civil war, they had left the unstable region of Deir Essor further east, hoping to be safe in Janairis, a place controlled by the Turkish army and pro-Turkish rebels. But for many people, Janairis became a deadly trap. About 50 buildings collapsed there.

The earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale struck 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 hopeless. Already scarred by the civil war that began in 2011, the country is divided into areas controlled by the Damascus government and areas controlled by rebels. International aid for the earthquake victims on the Syrian side of the border is therefore very hesitant.

The White Helmets involved in the rescue work called on Tuesday for urgent humanitarian aid from abroad. “Time is of the essence,” the non-governmental organization said. “Hundreds of people are still buried under the rubble.”

Used sources:

(t-online/afp)