A healthy newborn was rescued from rubble in earthquake-stricken Syria

According to her doctor, a newborn girl born during last week’s tragic earthquake in northern Syria amid the debris of her family’s home is doing well and is being breastfed by the wife of the hospital’s director.

According to her great-uncle, Saleh al-Badran, the newborn, who has been given the name Aya, which is Arabic for “a sign from God,” might be allowed to leave the hospital as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday.

He added the infant would be raised by her paternal aunt, who gave birth recently and survived the earthquake.

Following the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, the newborn’s mother passed away shortly after giving birth.

Her father, along with her four siblings, also perished in the quake.

The wife of the hospital’s director has been nursing the infant girl, according to Dr. Hani Maarouf, a pediatrician at Cihan Hospital in the northern Syrian city of Afrin.

Maarouf stated over the phone from Afrin, “We have discontinued all the medications that we were providing Aya, and now she is breastfed when she needs it.

Maarouf claimed that when several people showed up posing as her relatives, local police officers were stationed at the hospital to ensure that the infant was not attempted to be abducted.

More than 10 hours after the February 6 earthquake struck, rescuers in the northern Syrian town of Jinderis came across the dark-haired infant while they were sifting through the rubble of the five-story apartment complex where her parents resided.

The newborn remained attached to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, by her umbilical cord despite being buried beneath the concrete.

The infant was taken by ambulance to a hospital nearby Afrin, where she has been looked after.

Many of the cities and towns home to millions of people were reduced to scraps of concrete and bent metal by the devastating earthquake that rocked southeast Turkey and northern Syria and was followed by a series of earthquakes.

More than 35,000 people died, and as search teams locate more bodies, the death toll is expected to grow further.

The earthquake demolished numerous housing units in Jinderis, where Aya’s family had resided since 2018.

According to al-Badran, a relative of Aya’s father, Abdullah Turki Mleihan, departed his native Khsham village in eastern Deir el-Zour province in 2014 after the Islamic State organization took control of it.