A six-year-old boy was rescued from the rubble of a deadly earthquake in Indonesia after spending two days trapped under rubble without food or water, in a “miraculous” rescue.
The dramatic rescue caught on camera raised hopes that survivors could still be pulled alive from the wreck days after a powerful earthquake struck the West Java town of Cianjur on Monday, killing at least 271 people.
Once we realised Azka was alive everybody broke into tears, including me. It was very moving, it felt like a miracle.”” a local volunteer said, reports RTE.
The video shows rescuers freeing the boy Azka from a destroyed house in the hardest-hit Cugenang district of Cianjur.
The man who pulled him out of a hole dug in the rubble grabbed him by both arms, while another rescuer ran after them to hold the boy’s hand, footage from West Java released by the Bogor district administration shows.
The boy was later shown calmly sipping a drink, held up by a soldier while another rescuer stroked his hair.
His mother died in the quake and her body was found hours before Azka’s rescue, a volunteer said.
The boy was later found next to his dead grandmother, volunteers said.
He was only saved by a wall that supported another collapsed wall, preventing it from falling on him, local media reported.
“He was found on the left side of the house, on a bed. He was protected by a pillow and there was a ten-centimetre gap between him and the concrete slab. Such a narrow space, it was dark, hot and there was not enough hole for air. We didn’t expect him to still be alive after 48 hours, if we knew we would have tried harder the night before. For all the years since I became a volunteer, I’ve never seen anything like this. How can you not cry?” reports RTE.
Many of those killed in the quake were children at school or at home when the quake struck, authorities said.
But authorities warned that time was running out as rescuers were delayed by heavy rain and life-threatening aftershocks.
“Please pray for us so the 40 missing people could be found,” said the head of the national disaster mitigation agency, reports RTE.
Authorities continue to search for dozens of people buried under the rubble, including a missing seven-year-old girl.
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