Turkey, Syria earthquakes: Videos show distressing stories of children
Turkey and Syria earthquakes: A young child was pulled from the rubble in Syria's Azaz, after a devastating earthquake shook the country and Turkey, leaving over 5000 people dead.
While rescue teams are scrambling to find survivors trapped under debris after a series of massive earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, some heart-wrenching videos of children and their parents have emerged on social media claiming to be from the disaster-struck countries.
A young child was pulled from the rubble in Syria's Azaz, after a devastating earthquake shook the country and Turkey, leaving over 5000 people dead. Syrian toddler Raghad Ismail was rushed to safety from the rubble of her home after it collapsed. But most of her family, including her mother, did not make it out alive.
Reuters reported that cradled in the arms of a rescue worker, she emerged unscathed from the ruins in the Syrian city of Azaz at daybreak on Monday. An uncle looking after her said her two siblings died along with her mother, who was pregnant.
Ismail, 18 months old, ate a piece of bread as she sat on cushions on the ground under a blanket later in the day, a heater helping shield her from the winter cold.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in the early hours of Monday while people were asleep and dozens of aftershocks have been felt in the hours since.
In an extremely dishearting incident, a video has gone viral on the internet in which a man can be seen carrying an infant out of the wreckage. Social media reports claim that the video was allegedly shot in Aleppo, Syria. The video shows the man crying inconsolably as he held the body of his infant who was killed in the earthquake.
WARNING: The following video contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing
The man is seen tightly clutching the body of his child, wrapped in blankets. People around him are seen trying to console the man.
Charles Lister, the director of the Syrian chapter of the Middle Eastern Institute, posted pictures of two incidents where Syrian rescuers and civilians in the rebel-held regions rescued two children from the debris of the collapsed buildings where their chances of survival were slim to none.
He shared pictures of a boy who was trapped under the collapsed upper floor of a multi-story building in Syria’s Salqin town, which falls under Idlib governorate. The picture shared by Lister in his tweet showed the boy’s body hanging over the edge.
In another tweet, originally shared by Hadi Alabdallah, a Syrian journalist from Homs, a small child was seen in a crib, eating a piece of bread, with a bandage wrapped around her hand.
"Where is my mum?" asked a distraught seven-year-old girl who was pulled - her face, hair and pyjamas covered in dust - from a collapsed building in Hatay, on the Turkish side of the border.
The sense of disbelief was widespread, as residents struggled to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
"We thought it was the apocalypse," said Melisa Salman, a 23-year-old reporter in the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.
In another stunning video from Syria's largest city Aleppo, a Twitter user claimed that a woman, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave birth while trapped in the debris. The rescuers, however, managed to reach her after a titanic effort, but found that the woman had lost her life.
Reports suggest the newborn was located and retrieved alive, proving the power of life over death.
(With inputs from agencies)
