ISLAMABAD,
October 11, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Natural
disasters bring miseries, sadness and tragic experiences for the
unfortunate humans that get trapped by them. But for some, miracles
may find their way into their lives, hand in hand with these very same
catastrophes.
A
woman and her toddler spent almost three days under rubble and were
miraculously saved while a baby that came to life only hours before
the killer Asian quake struck was named "earthquake".
After
60 hours buried in the twisted wreckage of a 10-storey apartment
complex, an Iraqi woman and her two-year-old son were pulled out alive
to cheers from her British and Pakistani rescuers.
The
woman's faint cries lead rescuers to an air pocket where she was found
cradling her son in the wreckage of an Islamabad building which was
brought down by Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Emotions
ran high as Pakistani soldiers and a British rescue team using sniffer
dogs finally dug the pair out of the Margalla Towers complex around
two hours later.
"We
have recovered an Iraqi woman and her two-year-old son alive from the
debris of the building. It's miraculous," junior interior
minister Shehzad Waseem told AFP.
Sniffer
dogs had led aid teams to near where the Iraqi woman and child were,
and then they could hear their voice, he added.
"They
could see through a hole that the son was lying in the mother's lap in
a tiny space and that she was semi-crouched," he said.
"Then
came the most arduous job because they had to be careful not to
dislodge any of the concrete slabs and make them fall on the
survivors. It took them two hours to free them and around midnight we
managed to recover them ... They were traumatized. They have been
there for more than 60 hours."
The
boy had no physical injuries but was being kept under observation in
an intensive care unit at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences,
said doctor Azkar Beg.
The
boy's survival was bittersweet for the mother, who was distraught
after hearing that her husband had died, Beg said.
The
woman, 32, was being operated on for a broken leg, he said.
The
massive earthquake struck Saturday, October 8, the Indian
Subcontinent, devastating entire villages in Pakistan, India and
Afghanistan.
More
than 40,000 people are feared dead in Pakistan alone. The epicenter of
the quake was near Muzaffarabad, the main city of
Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Major
Boost
 |
|
Kashmiri earthquake survivor feeds her son inside a makeshift shelter. (Reuters)
|
Another
40 to 50 people were still trapped beneath the mammoth pile of smashed
concrete and twisted metal although some of those are believed to have
died, Waseem and police officials said.
Five
people have now been brought out alive from the destroyed building, an
upscale development where many foreign workers lived, and 30 people
are confirmed dead.
Waseem
said rescue teams had begun to get discouraged because they were only
finding bodies but their latest success had given them a major boost.
They
had gone around 24 hours without finding anyone alive after dragging
out a male survivor from the building late Sunday, October 9.
"We
were very depressed by the evening that there may not be any survivors
but this remarkable achievement has given us new hope. At no stage did
the British or the Pakistani rescuers lose hope but this has spurred
them," he said.
"Baby
Quake"
And
in Indian-administered Kashmir, a father has named his baby boy
"Zalzala", or earthquake in Urdu, after he and the mother
survived the quake.
The
earthquake brought Amina’s brick house tumbling down in the remote
Jabla village, trapping the mother and the newly born child in an
eerie, cold darkness, Reuters reported.
They
were pulled out of the rubble after the boy's father Manzoor Ahmed Mir
and others spent 18 hours digging with bare hands.
"It's
a blessing from Allah that they are alive. He brought the earthquake
with him so I have named him Abid Zalzala," said the 35-year-old
farmer.
"I
was not at home when the earthquake struck. When I returned, my house
was in rubble. I could hear my wife's voice from below, calling out my
name," he said.
Mir
ran around for help, collecting other villagers from houses scattered
around the scenic mountain village.
After
18 hours of digging, the two were pulled out and taken to the army
camp at Uri, said Mir, recalling the cold night he spent digging for a
glimpse of his wife and newborn son.
"Both
the mother and child are healthy," Indian army doctor Rahul
Kodgule told Reuters at a makeshift hospital in Uri, about 100 km (62
miles) west of Indian Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, where they
were taken after their miraculous rescue.
The
two were being moved to a bigger army hospital in Srinagar.
A
senior official of Indian-administered Kashmir said on Monday the
death toll in the quake could touch 2,000. The fate of about 10,000
people, living in remote areas on the border with Pakistan, was not
yet known.
