Turkey, Syria earthquake: 7-yr-old girl shielding sibling under rubble goes viral

The 7.8 magnitude quake in southeast Turkey and northern Syria on early Monday, followed by more quakes and multiple aftershocks have left thousands displaced, prompting leaders across the world to provide a humanitarian response.

As the death toll topped 7,700 and authorities scramble to pull out more survivors amid a frantic rescue operation in the earthquake-hit Turkey, Syria, a video of a seven-year-old girl shielding her sibling under the rubble has gone viral. The girl and her younger brother were stuck under a heavy concrete rubble of a collapsed building for hours before they were rescued.

Sharing a photograph of the trapped siblings, a United Nations representative, Mohamad Safa tweeted Tuesday, “The 7 year old girl who kept her hand on her little brother’s head to protect him while they were under the rubble for 17 hours has made it safely…”

As videos of the moment before their rescue also surfaced online, they were both lauded for being brave while the girl was hailed as a hero for maintaining her strength and determination in the face of the disaster.

In a different incident, a newborn infant and a toddler were rescued from a war-ravaged Syrian town, news agency AP reported.

The 7.8 magnitude quake in southeast Turkey and northern Syria on early Monday followed by more quakes and multiple aftershocks have left thousands displaced, prompting leaders across the world to provide a humanitarian response. In the war-battered Syria, already devastated by 12 years of conflict, a key issue complicating the dispersal of aid is “the war and the way the aid response is split between rebel areas and Damascus,” AP reported quoting Aron Lund, a fellow with New York-based think tank Century International who researches Syria.

In Turkey, the death toll has topped 5,400, with some 31,000 people injured while that in the government-held areas of Syria climbed over 800, with some 1,500 injured, according to official data cited by AP.