Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/SYRIA: Rescuers pulled four people, including a six-year-old, alive from under the rubble in Syria, four days after the devastating earthquake killed more than 23,700 citizens in Syria and Turkey.
According to the AFP, volunteers in the rebel-held northwestern town of Jandairis pulled shell-shocked Musa Hmeidi from under the wreckage of a crumpled building as dozens of residents cheered.
The little boy’s bruised face had been covered in bandages after medics gave him first aid on the spot in Jindayris, one of the strings of rebel-held towns damaged by Monday’s earthquake.
Abu Bakr Mohammed said that “Musa rescued from under the rubble on the fifth day after the earthquake,” one of the volunteer rescuers who pulled out the young boy.
“He suffered minor wounds while his brother died. His family members have still under the debris. We know nothing about them as of yet.”
State news agency SANA said that in the government-held town of Jableh, emergency teams pulled three citizens alive from under the rubble.
Rescued emergency operation
Discovery of the four still alive defied the odds as rescuers said more than 90% of the survivors were rescued within the first three days of the rescue emergency operation after such a primary disaster.
Rescuers and residents have been racing against a time to find survivors with few means at their disposal, sometimes digging with their bare hands and using household utensils to remove the collapsed masonry. Rescuers in Jandairis found the newborn girl alive under the rubble, her umbilical cord still attached to her dead mother.
The massive earthquake killed more than 22,700 people in Syria and Turkey in one of the region’s worst disasters in centuries. Six survivors were pulled from under the rubble in Turkey.
