Dozens of people have offered to adopt a baby girl whose mother died giving birth to her under the rubble of their home in north-west Syria during Monday's earthquake.
Video footage on social media showed the newborn surrounded by destroyed buildings in the freezing winter before a man carried her away on Tuesday.
Her parents reportedly died in the building collapse in Jenderes, near the city of Afrin, which sustained major damage in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria.
All four of her siblings also died as a result of the quake, reports said.
Now baby Aya, as she has been named, is safe at a Syrian American Medical Society hospital, a senior member of staff for the organisation told The National.
Her father's uncle Salah Al Badran, whose own house was destroyed, will take in baby Aya.
Mr Al Badran and his family managed to escape their one-story house. Now he and his 11-member family are living in a tent.
“After the earthquake, there’s no one able to live in his house or building. Only 10 per cent of the buildings here are safe to live in and the rest are unlivable,” he told AP through voice messages.
Rescue workers in the now-decimated town of Jenderis discovered Aya on Monday afternoon, while an umbilical cord connected her with her death mother.
She was taken to a hospital in Afrin by a distant relative, arriving "in such a bad state", Dr Hani Marouf, a paediatrician, told the BBC.
"She had bumps, bruises, she was cold and barely breathing,” he said.
Hospital manager Dr Khalid Attiah told the BBC he had received dozens of calls from people all over the world wanting to adopt baby Aya.
Before Aya's uncle was found, Dr Attiah, who has a daughter who is four months older, said: “I won’t allow anyone to adopt her now. Until her distant family return, I’m treating her like one of my own.”
Thousands more have taken to social media to ask if they can adopt little Aya.
One prospective parent emailed a reporter at The National after seeing a report on its website on Tuesday.
“Something compelled me to write to you and ask if you have any contacts that I could reach out to about adopting this baby,” said the email.
“I'm sure there are so many other babies and small children that may have been orphaned in Syria after this terrible earthquake and need help.”
One Kuwaiti TV anchor said: “I'm ready to take care of and adopt this child if legal procedures allow me to.”
Hopes were fading on Friday morning of finding more people alive after the devastating earthquake.
More than 20,700 deaths have been recorded so far in the world’s deadliest earthquake since 2010.
Rescuers pulled more survivors from beneath collapsed buildings late on Thursday, including a girl, 10, in Antakya district in Turkey’s Hatay province.
DHA news agency said after making initial contact with the child, rescuers worked for 32 hours at the site to clear a passage to her.
Medics had to amputate one of her arms to free the girl from the rubble because removing the block that was crushing her would have endangered her further, the news agency reported.
The girl’s parents and three siblings were found dead.
An hour before that, rescuers pulled a girl, 17, from the rubble in Adiyaman province. Miners and others brought her out and medics took her to an ambulance on a stretcher, with an IV bag hanging.
They briefly clapped before a rescuer asked for silence. Also, a 20 year old was rescued in Kahramanmaras by IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation workers, who shouted “God is Great”.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Dhadak 2
Director: Shazia Iqbal
Starring: Siddhant Chaturvedi, Triptii Dimri
Rating: 1/5
Company%20Profile
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Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
The design
The protective shell is covered in solar panels to make use of light and produce energy. This will drastically reduce energy loss.
More than 80 per cent of the energy consumed by the French pavilion will be produced by the sun.
The architecture will control light sources to provide a highly insulated and airtight building.
The forecourt is protected from the sun and the plants will refresh the inner spaces.
A micro water treatment plant will recycle used water to supply the irrigation for the plants and to flush the toilets. This will reduce the pavilion’s need for fresh water by 30 per cent.
Energy-saving equipment will be used for all lighting and projections.
Beyond its use for the expo, the pavilion will be easy to dismantle and reuse the material.
Some elements of the metal frame can be prefabricated in a factory.
From architects to sound technicians and construction companies, a group of experts from 10 companies have created the pavilion.
Work will begin in May; the first stone will be laid in Dubai in the second quarter of 2019.
Construction of the pavilion will take 17 months from May 2019 to September 2020.
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
How Voiss turns words to speech
The device has a screen reader or software that monitors what happens on the screen
The screen reader sends the text to the speech synthesiser
This converts to audio whatever it receives from screen reader, so the person can hear what is happening on the screen
A VOISS computer costs between $200 and $250 depending on memory card capacity that ranges from 32GB to 128GB
The speech synthesisers VOISS develops are free
Subsequent computer versions will include improvements such as wireless keyboards
Arabic voice in affordable talking computer to be added next year to English, Portuguese, and Spanish synthesiser
Partnerships planned during Expo 2020 Dubai to add more languages
At least 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment or blindness
More than 90 per cent live in developing countries
The Long-term aim of VOISS to reach the technology to people in poor countries with workshops that teach them to build their own device
The specs
Engine: 2.4-litre 4-cylinder
Transmission: CVT auto
Power: 181bhp
Torque: 244Nm
Price: Dh122,900
Turkish Ladies
Various artists, Sony Music Turkey
Director: Romany Saad
Starring: Mirfat Amin, Boumi Fouad and Tariq Al Ibyari
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
