It had taken six hours to extract it from the ruins. A nine-year-old Syrian girl, Cham, rescued after being trapped for forty hours under the rubble after the earthquakes and whose video of the rescue had gone viral, is at risk of having her legs amputated. "She risks having her legs amputated" after being trapped under concrete slabs for 40 hours, Tarek Moustafa, an orthopaedic surgeon at an Idlib hospital, told AFP. "Help me," Cham implores as she lies on her hospital bed with a doll by her side.

The amputation operation has been postponed, but she is still recovering in a hospital in Idlib, said the doctor, who works at a hospital run by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). "Cham is one of many patients with the syndrome who have flocked to hospitals in the area," according to the doctor.

The "buried syndrome"

Like many survivors of the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 45,000 people in Syria and Turkey, Sham al-Sheikh Mohammad suffers from traumatic rhabdomyolysis, or "buried syndrome." Potentially fatal, this syndrome can lead to the amputation of a limb, damage the kidneys or cause heart complications.



The little girl had been buried under the rubble of her home in Armanaz, northwestern Syria. In the video posted online by the White Helmets, the rescuers working in rebel-held areas in Syria, they can be heard joking with the girl to give her courage. She hums with them a song dedicated to the Syrian capital, Damascus (Cham in Arabic), whose name it bears, or asks them for water.

At least 100 people affected, mostly children

The health department in the rebel- and jihadist-held city of Idlib has identified at least 100 patients with buried syndrome in the area, many of whom suffer from kidney failure. Most are children traumatized by the tragedy, which has left some of them orphans. Their limbs were compressed for more than 12 hours, which blocked blood flow.

Often, the patient complains only of pain in the limbs, unaware that he may subsequently develop potentially fatal heart and kidney problems. "This is what we call 'the smile of death'," says Tarek Moustafa.

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