Six killed in fresh Turkey earthquake, as newborn baby pulled out of rubble 10 days after, adopted

Six people have been confirmed killed in the latest earthquake to strike the border region of Turkey and Syria, authorities reported on Tuesday, two weeks after a larger one killed more than 47,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.

This is just as a baby born under the rubble of a collapsed building in Syria, and the only member of her immediate family to survive the penultimate Monday massive earthquake which struck the country, has been adopted by her aunt and uncle.

The latest Monday’s quake, said to have registered magnitude of 6.4, was centred near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said there had been 90 aftershocks. “Six thousand tents were sent to the area overnight for residents alarmed by the new quake.”

The Hatay provincial governor’s building, already damaged in the February 6 quakes, collapsed in the latest tremor, television footage showed.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 294 people had been injured, with 18 seriously hurt and transported to hospitals in Adana and Dortyol.

“Patients were evacuated from some health facilities that had remained in operation after the massive tremors two weeks ago, as cracks had emerged in the buildings,” Koca said on Twitter.

In Samandag, where AFAD had reported one person dead on Monday, residents said more buildings had collapsed, but that most of the town had already fled after the initial earthquakes. Mounds of debris and discarded furniture lined the dark, abandoned streets.

Muna Al Omar said she had been in “a tent in a park in central Antakya when the ground started heaving again.”

“I thought the earth was going to split open under my feet,” she said on Monday, crying as she held her 7-year-old son.

Meanwhile, a baby girl born under the rubble of a collapsed building in Syria, and the only member of her immediate family to survive a massive earthquake, has been adopted by her aunt and uncle.

Thousands of people had offered to adopt the newborn, who was still connected to her mother by her umbilical cord when she was rescued.

She was discharged from hospital after a “DNA test confirmed her aunt was a blood relative.”

Doctors said she was in good health.

“She is one of my children now,” her uncle by marriage Khalil al-Sawadi said, adding: “I will not differentiate between her and my children.

The baby has now been named after her late mother Afraa. Shortly after she was rescued, officials had named her Aya, which means miracle in Arabic.

A video of her rescue shortly after the tremor went viral on social media.

Dramatic footage showed a man sprinting away from the debris as he carried her covered in dust in his arms. She had reportedly been under the collapsed building for more than 10 hours and doctors said “she had arrived to hospital in a bad condition, with bruises and cuts all over her body.”

The building in which her family lived was one of about 50 reportedly destroyed by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Jindayris, an opposition-held town in Idlib province that is close to the Turkish border.

“Her mother went into labour soon after the disaster and gave birth before she died.

“Her father, four siblings and an aunt were also killed.

“This girl means so much to us because there’s no-one left of her family besides this baby,” Mr Sawadi said.

“She’ll be a memory for me, for her aunt and for all of our relatives in the village of her mother and father,” a relative said.

AP/BBC/Reuters