Internally displaced people queue for food at the Yeni Hatay Stadyumu camp, Syria, February 10, 2023. (Credit: Benoit Tessier/ Reuters)
Rescuers pulled four people, including a six year old, alive from the rubble in Syria Friday, four days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 22,700 people in Syria and neighboring Turkey, an AFP correspondent and state media reported.
As dozens of residents cheered them on, volunteers in the rebel-held northwestern town of Jandairis pulled a truamtized Musa Hmeidi from under the wreckage of a crumpled building, the AFP correspondent said.
In the government-held town of Jableh, emergency teams pulled three people alive from under the rubble, state news agency SANA said.
The discovery of four people still alive beneath collapsed buildings defies the odds, as experts say more than 90 percent of survivors of major disasters are rescued within the first three days of emergency operations.
The little boy's bruised face was covered in bandages after medics gave him on-site first aid. Jindayris is one of a string of rebel-held towns that was heavily damaged by Monday's quake.
"Musa was rescued from under the rubble on the fifth day after the earthquake," said Abu Bakr Mohammed, one of the volunteer rescuers who rescued the boy.
"He suffered minor injuries, while his brother died. His [other] family members are still under the debris. We know nothing about them as of yet."
Rescuers and residents have been racing against time to find survivors with scant means at their disposal, sometimes digging with their bare hands or using household utensils to remove the collapsed masonry.
Rescuers in Jandairis found a newborn girl alive under the rubble Tuesday, her umbilical cord still attached to her dead mother.
The massive quake killed more than 22,700 people in Turkey and Syria, in one of the region's worst disasters in a century. Six survivors were also pulled from under the rubble in Turkey Friday.