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Rescuers found a six-year-old boy alive under the rubble on Friday, four days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 22,700 people in Syria and Turkey, an AFP correspondent reported. Emergency workers in Syria’s rebel-held northwest pulled shell-shocked Musa Hmeidi from under the wreckage of a crumpled building as dozens of residents cheered them on, the correspondent said. The little boy, dressed in a pink jacket, had defied all odds as experts say that more than 90 percent of survivors are generally rescued within the first three days of emergency operations after such a disaster. Musa’s bruised face was covered in bandages after medics gave him first aid on the spot.
“Musa was rescued from under the rubble on the fifth day after the earthquake,” said Abu Bakr Mohammed, one of the volunteer rescuers who pulled out the young 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.”
Syrian rescuers have been racing against time to find survivors with few means at their disposal, sometimes digging with their bare hands or using household utensils to remove the collapsed masonry. The rebel-held town of Jindayris was badly hit by the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck before dawn on Monday near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, not far away across the border.
On Tuesday, rescuers found a newborn girl still alive under the rubble, 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 people were also pulled alive from under the rubble in Turkey on Friday.
