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BEIRUT: A baby girl born under the rubble of her family’s home in northern Syria after last week’s devastating earthquake was in good health Monday and being breast-fed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is being cared for, her doctor said.
The infant, named Aya — Arabic for “a sign from God” — by hospital workers, may be able to leave the hospital as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday, according to her great-uncle, Saleh Al-Badran. He said the baby’s paternal aunt, who recently gave birth and survived the quake, will raise her.
The newborn’s mother died after giving birth to her in the aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Turkiye and Syria. Her father and four siblings were also killed in the quake.
Dr. Hani Maarouf, a pediatrician at Cihan Hospital in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, told The Associated Press that the wife of the hospital’s director has been breast-feeding the baby girl.
“We have stopped all the medicines that we were giving Aya and now she is being breast-fed when she needs,” Maarouf said by telephone from Afrin.
Maarouf said local policemen were standing guard at the hospital to make sure that no one tries to kidnap the child after a series of people showed up falsely claiming to be her relatives.