Heart-wrenching moment sobbing child and baby are among family members pulled to safety two days after quake hit Turkey and Syria and left them entombed in the wreckage of their home – as death toll nears 8,000
Footage has captured the heart-wrenching moment a sobbing child was dug out from the rubble following Syria’s devastating earthquake.
Heroic rescue workers were videoed desperately foraging through debris to reach several young children and family members.
The survivors were said to be buried under the wreckage of their home in Jindires, Aleppo, of northern Syria where the worst of the damage was felt.
Syria’s Civil Defence workers were filmed frantically calling out in the dark, wet remains of the building.
The team are then seen to find one child whose lower half is trapped under bricks and rubble – her head appears to be covered in blood.
More workers also work to lift bricks away from another child’s body, with one person feeling their wrist to check for a pulse.
Amid screams and wails, the camera turns again to a waving hand – the only body part visible from a pile of rubble.
A baby is also filmed trapped beneath a huge slab of rock.
As the rescuers continue to scoop up the debris with their bare hands, one child begins to sob and cough.
But soon after, they are lifted out alongside a man on a stretcher.
A rescue worker feels the pulse of a child trapped under the wreckage of a home in Syria
As workers scoop up the debris with their bare hands, one child begins to sob and cough
The footage comes after more than 7,800 were killed in the 7.8-magnitude quake and its aftermath, with 5,894 fatalities in Turkey and at least 1,932 in Syria.
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that the toll could soar to as much as 20,000 amid efforts to rescue those still trapped under the rubble.
More than 23 million could also be affected across the two countries, according to WHO assessments.
Earlier tonight, a team of 77 search and rescue specialists, state-of-the-art equipment and four dogs arrived in Turkey from the UK.
The plane arrived in the city of Gaziantep, south east Turkey, to assist current rescue efforts.
Teams from the US will also arrive tomorrow in the southeastern province of Adiyaman to focus on urban search and rescue following the tragedy.
But aid to quake-hit Syria has been slowed by sanctions and damage caused to the sole border crossing used to shuttle aid from Turkey into the country.
A key issue complicating the dispersal of aid is ‘the war and the way the aid response is split between rebel areas and Damascus,’ said Aron Lund, a fellow with New York-based think tank Century International who researches Syria.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said: ‘It is imperative that everybody sees it as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake. Please don’t politicise this. Let’s get the aid out to the people who so desperately need it.’