• An aunt and uncle have adopted a newborn born.
• Hundreds of people had expressed interest in adopting the newborn.
• Her parents, four brothers, and an aunt died under the rubble.

An aunt and uncle have adopted a newborn born amid the wreckage of a collapsed building in Syria, the only member of her immediate family to survive a devastating earthquake.

Hundreds of people had expressed interest in adopting the newborn, who was still attached to her mother by her umbilical cord when she was rescued.

She was released from the hospital when a DNA test revealed that her aunt was blood-related.

She was in wonderful health, according to the doctors.

“She is now one of my children,” Khalil al-Sawadi, her uncle via marriage, told the Associated Press.

“I shall not make a distinction between her and my children.”

The infant has been named Afraa after her late mother. Officials named her Aya, which means miracle in Arabic, shortly after she was rescued.

A memory

Shortly after the tremor, a video of her rescue went viral on social media.

A man was seen rushing away from the wreckage while carrying a dust-covered woman in his arms. She apparently spent more than ten hours under the collapsed structure, and medics stated she arrived at the hospital in critical condition, with bruises and cuts all over her body.

The structure where her family lived was allegedly one of roughly 50 that was demolished by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Jindayris, an opposition-held town in Idlib province near the Turkish border.

According to a relative, her mother went into labor soon after the accident and gave birth before dying. Her father, four brothers, and an aunt were also murdered.

“This girl means so much to us because there’s no one left of her family besides this baby,” Mr. Sawadi told sources. “She’ll be a memory for me, for her aunt, and for all of our relatives in the village of her mother and father.”

Mr. Sawadi, who was present when she was rescued, told the Associated Press he had been worried someone might kidnap Afraa during her two weeks in hospital as offers to adopt her flooded in.

Her adoptive family stated that the best place for Afraa was with family, regardless of how tough their situation was. Mr. Sawadi and his wife Hala’s house was also devastated by the earthquake, and they are currently staying with cousins.

They both welcomed Hala’s baby girl three days after the earthquake.

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