Mother and baby reunited in Turkey nearly two months after earthquake

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A mother has been reunited with her baby in southern Turkey after a DNA test confirmed it was her daughter, almost two months after a devastating earthquake ripped through the region, the country’s family ministry said.

The three-and-a-half-month old “miracle baby”, called Vetin, was pulled out of the rubble of a building in the province of Hatay more than five days after the Feb. 6 quake with no health problems, 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 of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik was quoted as saying.

After initially being cared for at a hospital in Adana, the baby had been taken by the presidential plane to be cared for by authorities in Ankara.

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 Feb. 6 earthquake and subsequent tremors, with 50,000 of those in Turkey and the remainder in Syria.

The baby’s father and two brothers died in the quake, the ministry statement said.

(Reporting by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Ed Osmond)