A newborn with her umbilical cord still attached to her mother was miraculously pulled alive from rubble in Syria after the devastating earthquake flattened their home — killing her mom and the rest of her immediate family, a relative said.
Extended family members discovered the infant as they trawled through the remnants of the home in the northern Syrian town of Jindayris in the aftermath of Monday’s deadly 7.8-magnitude quake.
“We heard a voice while we were digging,” a relative, Khalil al-Suwadi, told AFP.
“We cleared the dust and found the baby with the umbilical cord (intact) so we cut it and my cousin took her to hospital.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if the girl’s mother, Afraa, gave birth while she was trapped under the rubble — or if she was still alive by the time family members found them.
Heartbreaking footage of the newborn’s dramatic rescue has gone viral on social media.
The video shows a man frantically running from the rubble clutching the dust-covered newborn in his arms.
Another man follows closely behind and throws a blanket in the baby’s direction.
The newborn was rushed to a clinic in the nearby town of Afrin for treatment while relatives spent several hours retrieving the bodies of her mom, father Abdullah, four siblings and an aunt, Suwadi said.
The little girl, who arrived at the clinic in a bad condition, is still undergoing treatment but is now stable, pediatrician Hani Maarouf told AFP.
“She had several bruises and lacerations over all her body,” he said. “She also arrived with hypothermia because of the harsh cold. We had to warm her up and administer calcium.”
She is just the latest child to be pulled alive from the quake rubble after footage emerged Monday of rescuers desperately trying to reach a boy named Ahmed in the village of Qatma, just north of Aleppo.
Her survival is the latest in a string of stories of children being pulled from the rubble
The death toll from the earthquake, which ravaged Syria and neighboring Turkey, soared above 5,000 by Tuesday — and is only expected to rise further.
Rescuers continued to trawl through rubble in freezing temperatures in search of survivors after the quake cut a swath of destruction that stretched hundreds of miles through the two countries.