A baby rescued from under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Syria lost its mother moments after birth.
Footage shared online shows rescuers lifting the dust-choked newborn to safety as they scale the mounting debris of buildings crumbled by a devastating earthquake.
Reports say the child’s mother went into labour as the magnitude 7.8 quake hit on Monday. She tragically did not survive the impact of the tremor.
The baby’s miraculous recovery was one of the thousands of rescues across Turkey and Syria, as overwhelmed emergency workers worked through close-to-freezing temperatures, unrelenting rainfall, and power outages.
The quake – the region’s deadliest since 1999 – hit on Monday morning, toppling thousands of buildings, including many tower blocks and hospitals, and leaving thousands of people injured or homeless in Turkish and Syrian cities.
The death toll climbed past 5,000 on Tuesday, with many more believed to be missing beneath the flattened buildings.
Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south.
In Syria, authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 100 km from the epicentre.
The death toll reached 3,419 people in Turkey on Tuesday, vice president Fuat Oktay said, adding that the freezing winter weather was hampering rescue efforts and making it difficult to bring aid to the regions.
In Syria, where the quake did further damage to infrastructure already razed by more than a decade of war, the death toll stands at just over 1,600, according to the government.
A trail of destruction has been left behind in both countries, made worse by at least 20 aftershocks that followed the quake, according to Ankara.
Earlier on Tuesday, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was especially concerned about areas of Turkey and Syria from which no information had emerged following a major earthquake that killed thousands.
“We’re especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO’s executive board meeting in Geneva.
“Damage mapping is one way to understand where we need to focus our attention.”
Dozens of countries deployed rescue teams to assist in the search, inlcuding a team of British search-and-rescue specialists heading to Turkey, set to leave the UK “imminently.”
Search and rescue teams continue their work at the collapsed buildings, in Idlib, Syria
A flight had been scheduled to leave Birmingham on Monday night, carrying personnel and equipment to help with relief efforts, after the earthquake claimed thousands of lives.
Development minister Andrew Mitchell confirmed on Tuesday morning that the British package of support – which includes a team of 76 search-and-rescue specialists, complete with state-of-the-art equipment and four specially trained dogs – would be leaving in the next couple of hours.
With agencies
A woman sits amidst rubble and damages following an earthquake in Gaziantep, Turkey
Smoke billows from the quake-struck Iskenderun Port, Turkey
