One-month-old baby survives airstrike in Syria’s Idlib
Infant is pulled from rubble of building flattened by regime, Russian warplanes
Mahmoud Barakat
30 September 2016•Update: 01 October 2016
Syria
IDLIB, Syria
A one-month-old baby was rescued from the ruins of a building destroyed by Russian and regime airstrikes in Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib on Friday, according to local civil defense sources.
The five-story building was completely leveled on Friday morning after Russian and regime warplanes pounded the opposition-held city.
Civil defense teams had already pulled seven dead bodies from the debris when they found the infant.
"We found her in the fourth floor of the destroyed building; she was alive," civil defense official Abu Khalifa -- who did not provide his full name due to fears of reprisal -- told Anadolu Agency.
"We finally managed to extricate her from the rubble after two hours," he said.
One-month-old Hamida Matuk, whose family is believed to have been killed in the airstrike, has since been taken to a nearby field hospital for treatment.
Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which had erupted as part of that year’s "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research, a Beirut-based NGO, has put the total death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.
*Reporting by Halit Suleyman; Wriitng by Mahmoud Barakat
