Yemeni woman gives birth after surviving Turkey earthquake

A Yemeni woman in Turkey gave birth to a child hours after she was pulled from the rubble of her earthquake-stricken home last week.

Faten al-Yousifi was rescued after being trapped for 10 hours under rubble by her friends and rescue workers after an earthquake struck her apartment in Malatya, Turkey on 6 February, reported the BBC.

Al-Yousifi was 39 weeks pregnant at the time of her rescue, and had already decorated her baby’s nursery. Following her rescue, she was rushed to hospital where doctors performed an emergency Caesarian section to deliver her baby.

Sadly, Yousifi's husband and father of her child Burhan al-Alimi died under the rubble.

Yousifi and her husband fled Yemen in 2014, when civil war broke out in the country. Al-Alimi was 29 years old, and a final year chemical engineering student at Inonu University in Malatya.

She told the BBC that her situation had been "difficult, especially the beginning", but expressed gratitude to those who "stood with her" during her rescue and childbirth.

Yousifi named the baby girl Loujain, meaning silver in Arabic.

She has since moved in with a friend hundreds of miles away from the scene of her loss, to Kocaeli near Istanbul. The approximately 40,000 Yemenis living in Turkey predominantly live in Istanbul and its surroundings.

Yemen’s ambassador to Turkey, Muhammad Tariq, has visited both Yousifi and baby Loujain.

Eight Yemenis are among the foreign casualties of the earthquake in Turkey, the BBC said, while several Palestinians, Lebanese and Moroccans are also among the dead.

The devastating earthquake has killed at least 45,000 people across Turkey and Syria. Many survivors are homeless, and braving near-freezing temperatures.