A six-year-old boy was pulled alive from the rubble of a house in Indonesia on Wednesday, two days after the deadly earthquake that killed 271 people in the archipelago. In a video showing the rescue operation shared by Indonesian rescue services, the boy is seen being pulled from the ruins of a house.
He appears calm, as rescuers give him something to drink through a straw. The operation took place in the village of Nagrak.
“Azka is fine now”
Named Azka Maulana Malik, the young survivor survived for more than two days under the rubble, without eating or drinking. She was found near the body of her grandmother, and she would have survived thanks to a mattress. The bodies of the boy’s parents had been found shortly before.
The boy, treated in a refugee center, had no injuries, according to one of his relatives.
“Azka is fine now, he is not injured. The doctors say he is weak only because he is hungry,” a family member told reporters, The Guardian reported.
The rescue of young Azka has given hope to many families, whose loved ones are still missing after Monday’s earthquake. Of a relatively low magnitude -5.6 on the Richter scale-, however, it caused a lot of damage in the west of the island of Java, near its epicenter.
Another 41 missing
This densely populated area is covered in buildings built without regard to seismic standards, and this while Indonesia lies along the Ring of Fire, an area known for its many powerful earthquakes.
Visiting the area on Tuesday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for reconstruction operations to take these standards into account.
More than a third of the victims of Monday’s earthquake are children. The tremors occurred while many of them were at school. More than 30 school buildings were damaged, according to rescuers.
“We met in the courtyard, the children were terrified and crying. Everyone was worried about their families back home,” Mia Saharosa, a school teacher in the affected area, told CNN.
Apart from the 271 victims, 2,043 people were injured and 61,800 were displaced. 14 emergency reception centers have been established to house them. As of Thursday, 41 people were still missing. But more than three days after the quake, the chances of finding them alive are slim, rescuers said.
Source: BFM TV
