ISTANBUL, April 3 (Portal) – A mother has been reunited with her baby in southern Turkey after a DNA test confirmed it was her daughter, nearly two months after a devastating earthquake struck the region, the Family Ministry said of the country.
The three-and-a-half-month-old “miracle baby” named Vetin was pulled from the rubble of a building in Hatay province without any health problems more than five days after the Feb. 6 quake, a ministry statement said.
The minister handed her over to her mother, Yasemin Begdas, at a hospital in the city of Adana 54 days after the disaster.
“Reuniting a mother and her child is one of the most precious tasks in the world,” Minister for Family and Social Services Derya Yanik was quoted as saying.
The mother Yasemin Begdas, who survived the earthquake, reunites with her little girl Vetin while Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik looks on at a hospital in Adana, Turkey, March 31, 2023. Department of Family and Social Services/Handout via Portal
After initially being treated at a hospital in Adana, the baby was taken to authorities in Ankara on the presidential plane.
A DNA test revealed that Yasemin was her mother and the baby was flown back to Adana where the reunion took place at the hospital treating her.
More than 56,000 people were killed by the February 6 earthquake and subsequent shaking, including 50,000 in Turkey and the rest in Syria.
The baby’s father and two brothers died in the quake, the ministry statement said.
Reporting by Daren Butler; Edited by Jonathan Spicer and Ed Osmond
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