>
A heartbreaking moment: A child and a crying baby are among family members rescued two days after an earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, leaving them buried in the rubble of their home.
The footage captured the heartbreaking moment a crying child and baby were pulled from the rubble after Syria’s devastating earthquake.
Heroic rescue workers were caught on video desperately searching through the rubble to reach several young children and family members.
The survivors were said to be buried under the rubble of their home in Jindires, Aleppo, in northern Syria, where the worst damage was felt.
Syrian Civil Defense workers were filmed screaming frantically in the dark, dank remains of the building.
The team is then seen to find a boy whose lower half is trapped under bricks and rubble; his head appears to be covered in blood.
More workers also work to lift bricks from the body of another child, with one person touching his wrist to check for a pulse.
Amid screams and groans, the camera pans back to a waving hand, the only body part visible from a pile of rubble.
As rescuers continue to pick up the rubble with their bare hands, a boy begins to sob and cough.
But soon after, they are taken out along with another child, a baby and a man on a stretcher.
A rescuer takes the pulse of a boy trapped under the rubble of a house in Syria.
As workers pick up the rubble with their bare hands, a boy begins to sob and cough
The images come after more than 7,800 people were killed in the magnitude 7.8 quake and its aftermath, with 5,894 deaths in Turkey and at least 1,932 in Syria.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the death toll could rise to 20,000 amid efforts to rescue those still trapped under the rubble.
More than 23 million could also be affected in the two countries, according to WHO assessments.
Tonight a team of 77 search and rescue specialists, state of the art equipment and four dogs arrived in Turkey from the UK.
The aircraft arrived in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep to assist in ongoing rescue efforts.
US teams 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 held back by sanctions and damage to the only border crossing used to transport aid from Turkey into the country.
A key issue complicating aid distribution is “the war and the way the aid response is divided between rebel areas and Damascus,” said Aron Lund, a fellow at the New York-based think tank Century International. investigating Syria.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said: “It is imperative that everyone see this as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake.” Please don’t politicize this. Let’s get help to the people who need it so desperately.’