New Delhi: Amid a towering death toll of more than 28,000 victims due to a series of earthquakes, including a 7.8 magnitude one that flattened parts of Turkey and Northwestern Syria on February 6, a miraculous survival was recorded as a two-month-old baby was pulled out alive from underneath the rubble of a building in Turkey's southern Hatay province. The child was rescued nearly 128 hours after the tremors.
The country's Anadolu Agency tweeted on Saturday confirming that the baby survived the disaster and was "immediately taken to the hospital for medical checks". While Turkey's death toll has climbed to 24,617, more than 3,500 persons have died in Syria. Five days after the earthquake struck, several survivors were rescued from precarious conditions across the country.
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More than a dozen survivors were rescued Saturday, including a seven-month-old boy in Antakya - the capital of Hatay province - and a family in Kahramanmaras, the Turkish city closest to the epicenter of Monday's quake. Meanwhile, a 23-year-old Syrian man was rescued from the rubble of his home after being stuck for nearly five days, surviving on dirty, trickling water. Currently admitted at a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia where his 60-year-old mother is also undergoing treatment, the latter said he had given up all hopes of being saved.
The earthquake, which led to strong aftershocks, has been listed as the world's seventh-largest natural disaster of the 21st century, with an increasing death toll placing it shortly behind the 2003 earthquake in Iran which killed 31,000 people.
