Baby tied to umbilical cord pulled from rubble in Syria
A newborn baby girl has been pulled alive from the rubble of a home in northern Syria, after relatives found her still tied by her umbilical cord to her mother, who died in Monday's massive earthquake.
The infant is the sole survivor of her immediate family, the rest of whom were killed when the 7.8 - magnitude earthquake that struck Syria and neighbouring Turkey flattened the family home in the rebel-held town of Jindayris, said relative Khalil al-Suwadi.
Suwadi told AFP on Tuesday that he heard a voice while we were digging.
We found the baby with the umbilical cord intact and my cousin took her to the hospital. The video of the rescue went viral on social media.
The footage shows a man sprinting from the rubble of a collapsed four-storey building, clutching a tiny baby covered in dust.
A second man runs towards the first, carrying a blanket to try to warm the newborn in the sub-zero temperatures, while a third screams for a car to take her to the hospital.
The baby was taken for treatment in the nearby town of Afrin, while family members spent the next several hours recovering the bodies of her father, Abdullah, mother Afraa, four siblings and an aunt.
Their bodies were laid out on the floor of an adjacent relative's home ahead of a joint funeral held on Tuesday.
Suwadi stared at the lifeless corpses and listed their names in the dimly lit room.
We are displaced from the government-held eastern city of Deir Ezzor. Abdullah is his cousin and I am married to his sister.
The family home was one of about 50 in Jindayris that were flattened by the earthquake, according to an AFP correspondent.
More than 3,400 people were killed in Syria, as well as more than 1,600 killed in Turkey, authorities said.
800 of the dead were rebel-held towns and cities.
The newborn was hooked to an intravenous drip in an incubator in Afrin, her body scarred, and a bandage wrapped around her left fist.
She's forehead and fingers were still blue from the biting cold, as paediatrician Hani Maarouf monitored her vitals.
She is now stable, Maarouf said, but noted that she had arrived in bad condition.
He told AFP she had several bruises and lacerations over her body.
She arrived with hypothermia because of the harsh cold. We had to warm her up and administer calcium. In a 2018 offensive that took Kurdish forces out of the Afrin region, the Jindayris was seized by Turkey and its Syrian rebel proxies.
Cut off from government-held territory, the region depends heavily on aid from Turkey and lacks the expertise or manpower to mount an effective emergency response on its own.
The search for survivors in Syrian towns such as Jindayris has been delayed due to Turkish NGOs preoccupied with the rescue effort across the border.
More than 210 buildings have been flattened in the areas of rebel-held areas of Syria, according to the White Helmets rescue group.
Another 520 were partially destroyed, while thousands more were damaged, it said.
The White Helmets appealed to all humanitarian organisations and international bodies to provide material support and assistance, according to the White Helmets on Twitter.
Time is running out. Hundreds were still trapped under the rubble.