A mother has been reunited with her baby in southern Turkey on 1 April after a DNA test confirmed it was her daughter, 54 days after a devastating earthquake ripped through the region, Turkey’s family ministry said.
The three-and-a-half-month old baby called Vetin, was pulled out of the rubble of a building in the province of Hatay more than five days after the quake with no health problems.
The baby had been named Gizem (Mystery) by the medical authorities who took care of her after she was rescued.
The minister handed her over to her mother Yasemin Begdas at a hospital in the city of Adana 54 days after the disaster, reports Reuters news agency.
“Reuniting a mother and her child is one of the most precious tasks in the world,” said Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik.
“The baby is truly a miracle. The fact that she survived and had no health problems pulled at our heartstrings,” Yanik said.
The minister tweeted a video of the reunion on Monday, wherein the pair are seen cuddling in the hospital bed in Adana where Yasemin Begdas is receiving treatment.
The baby’s father and two brothers died in the quake, the ministry statement said.
The powerful earthquakes in Turkey claimed more than 50,000 lives in early February. On Feburary 6, magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes struck 11 Turkish provinces — Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Elazig, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa.
Around 14 million people in Türkiye have been affected by the quakes, as well as many others in northern Syria.
