Amid Grim Scenes After Quake, a Toddler's Rescue

Death toll is now more than 2.3K in Turkey and Syria
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 6, 2023 9:50 AM CST

The updates from Monday morning's powerful Turkey-Syria earthquake continue to be grim, with more than 2,300 dead in the latest official tally, per the AP. But amid the bad news come moments like this one, as shown in video from the BBC and Reuters. In the clip, a rescuer in the Turkish-controlled city of Azaz, Syria, carries a toddler who doesn't appear to be seriously hurt to safety after the child was pulled from the rubble of a building. The 7.8 magnitude quake—followed hours later by another of comparable size, along with dozens of smaller aftershocks—is the worst to hit Turkey this century, per Reuters.

Among other things, the quake flattened apartment blocks in both countries amid bitterly cold temperatures. "The building is four stories, and from three of them, no one made it out," says survivor Osama Abdul Hamid in Azmarin, Syria, per the AP. "God gave me a new lease on life." The news agency also quotes a British doctor at a hospital in Idlib city, Syria. "I'm literally taking a patient off a ventilator to give another patient a chance, having to decide which patient has more of a chance of surviving or not," says Shajul Islam. He adds that hospitals in the country were already severely strapped because of the country's long-running civil war. (More Turkey-Syria earthquake stories.)

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