The family is living temporarily in a tent.
Aleppo:
When the earthquake hit, Fatmah Ahmad’s family left their building in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo only to have her go into labor – giving birth to her third child in hospital hours later.
The journey to the hospital was difficult, with “many dead and damaged all around us”, she said, before rescuers guided them to safety.
“May God protect him, give him a good life and don’t deprive him of me,” she said of her new son, named Najm al-Din Mahmoud.
“He brought me back to life. I was afraid of losing him,” she added.
Even after he was born, mother and baby still faced danger. A major aftershock struck later that day as they lay in the maternity ward upstairs.
Unable to move, they were left alone as the doctors fled to safety. She said her parents and two other children, aged one and three, were on the lower floor of the hospital. Her husband, a soldier, was stationed outside Aleppo and was not there.
“I wrapped him up and started praying to God to protect us until the earthquake was over and we could go down safely,” she said.
Evacuated from their home and now released from the hospital, the family is living temporarily in a tent, part of a shelter near the airport that was reserved by the city for those displaced by the earthquake.
Their building didn’t collapse, but they couldn’t return until it was cleared to be a safe place to live.
Meanwhile, Najm lay in the blanket, eyes closed while the family prepared the bed on the tent platform. Recounting his adventures when he was born and nursed his other young children, his mother beamed with happiness.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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