Six-year-old rescued in Syria four days after quake
Rescue workers searching for survivors amid the rubble of a building in Jindayris on Friday
Jindayris – Rescuers found a six-year-old boy alive under the rubble on Friday four days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 22,000 people in Syria and Turkey, an AFP correspondent reported.
Emergency workers in Syria’s rebel-held northwest pulled shell-shocked Musa Hmeidi from under the wreckage of a crumpled building as dozens of residents cheered them on, the correspondent said.
The little boy, dressed in a pink jacket, had defied all odds as experts say that more than 90 percent of survivors are generally rescued within the first three days of emergency operations after such a disaster.
Musa’s bruised face was covered in bandages after medics gave him first aid on the spot.
Rescuers are still looking for other members of his family in the debris after his brother’s body was recovered earlier.
Syrian rescuers have been racing against time to find survivors with meagre financial means, sometimes having to dig with their bare hands or using kitchen utensils such as pots.
The rebel-held town of Jindayris was badly hit by the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck before dawn on Monday near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Syria.
On Tuesday, rescuers found a newborn girl still alive under the rubble, umbilical cord still attached to her dead mother.
The massive quake killed more than 22,300 people in Turkey and Syria, in one of the region’s worst disasters in a century. Six people were also recovered alive from under the rubble in Turkey on Friday.
At least 3,377 people have been killed in Syria, the government and rescuers said.
More than 2,030 people died and 2,950 others were injured in the rebel-held northwest, according to the White Helmets rescue group.