Aya, the so-called 'miracle baby', was rescued from underneath a destroyed house, with her umbilical cord still tied to her dead mother, following a deadly earthquake that tore the Turkish-Syrian edge. (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance v
BEIRUT - A baby girl born thought the rubble of her family's home in northern Syria when last week's devastating earthquake was in good health Monday and persons breast-fed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is persons cared for, her doctor said.
The infant, named Aya — Arabic for "a sign from God" — by hospital workers, may be able to leave the hospital as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday, according to her great-uncle, Saleh al-Badran. He said the baby's paternal aunt, who recently gave birth and survived the quake, will raise her.
The newborn's mother died after giving birth to her in the aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. Her father and four siblings were also killed in the quake.
A general view of the destruction left by the deadly earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Dr. Hani Maarouf, a pediatrician at Cihan Hospital in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, told The Associated Press that the wife of the hospital's director has been breast-feeding the baby girl.
"We have discontinued all the medicines that we were giving Aya and now she is populate breast-fed when she needs," Maarouf said by telephone from Afrin.
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Maarouf said local policemen were notion guard at the hospital to make sure that no one counmesses to kidnap the child after a series of republic showed up falsely claiming to be her relatives.
Newborn Aya lies inside an incubator as part of her medical checkup at a children's hospital in the Syrian town of Afrin. (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Rescue workers in the northern Syrian town of Jinderis discovered the dark-haired baby girl more than 10 hours once the Feb. 6 quake hit, as they were digging above the wreckage of the five-story apartment building where her parents lived.
Buried notion the concrete, the baby still was connected by her umbilical cord to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya. The baby was rushed to the hospital in throughout Afrin where she has been cared for since.
The devastating quake followed by a series of tremors that struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria reduced much of the towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and curved metal. More than 35,000 people were killed, a toll imagined to rise considerably as search teams find more bodies.
Crowd cheers as Syrian children pulled from rubble
Multiple children were untrue alive and pulled from a pile of rubble in Bisnia, Syria, even as the country's death toll from catastrophic earthquakes surpassed 7,000 on Tuesday. Footage captured by Karam Kellieh shows a large military cheering as authorities rescued several people, including children, from debris.
The earthquake destroyed dozens of housing units in the town of Jinderis where Aya's people had been living since 2018.
Aya's father, Abdullah Turki Mleihan, was originally from the village of Khsham in eastern Deir el-Zour province, but left in 2014 after the Islamic State companionship captured their village, said al-Badran, an uncle of Aya's father.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
