Baby born under earthquake rubble in Syria as mother and father die

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A child has been born under rubble in north-western Syria following Monday’s earthquake.

Video circulating on social media showed the newborn, naked in the freezing winter, surrounded by destroyed buildings.

A man carried her away from her birthplace, where her mother had died. The father is also reported to have died.

The incident took place in Jenderes, a town near the north-western city of Afrin, which is believed to be mostly destroyed in the aftermath of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.

The death toll in both countries has surpassed 5,000. The UN believes “thousands” of children may have been killed as the number of casualties continues to rise.

In Syria’s north-west, which remains out of government control, resources are sparse and infrastructure is already weak. Rescue teams and civilians have had to extract people from under the rubble by hand in the absence of heavy equipment and machinery.

“Come, come, don’t be afraid,” a White Helmets rescuer told a child who was crying underneath the rubble as he reached out to her in one video.

“She’s OK, she’s OK,” the rescuer told others during the operation, which appears to be taking place at night lit only by a torch.

“A child rescued from under the rubble, and a family trapped on the third floor of their house after parts of it collapsed in Afrin in the northern Aleppo countryside after midnight last night,” the group wrote on Twitter.

“Hundreds” more families are still trapped under the rubble, as rescue operations continued, the group said.