Beirut: A newborn girl who was born under the ruins of her family's home in northern Syria following last week's deadly earthquake was in good health and was being breastfed by the wife of the hospital's director, according to her doctor.
According to her great-uncle, Saleh al-Badran, the newborn, who was given the name Aya by medical staff, may be discharged as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday. Aya in Arabic means "a sign from God". The infant's paternal aunt, who just gave birth and survived the earthquake, will raise her, he said.
The mother of the child passed away shortly after giving birth to her in the wake of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. The earthquake also took the lives of her father and her four siblings.
The wife of the hospital's director has been nursing the infant girl, according to Dr Hani Maarouf, a paediatrician at Cihan Hospital in the northern Syrian city of Afrin.
“We have stopped all the medicines that we were giving Aya and now she is being breastfed when she needs,” Maarouf said by telephone from Afrin, Associated Press reported.
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 kidnapped.
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 in nearby Afrin, where she has since been looked after.
Many of the cities and towns that were 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 bodies are expected to be discovered as search teams continue to find bodies, bringing the death toll up to more than 35,000.
Numerous housing units in Jinderis, where Aya's family had resided since 2018, were demolished by the earthquake.
Al-Badran, an uncle of Aya's father, stated that Abdullah Turki Mleihan was originally from the Khsham village in the eastern Deir el-Zour region but departed in 2014 after the Islamic State group took control of their area.