A man was arrested in Turkey’s southern province of Hatay as he tried to steal a baby from a hospital, taking advantage of the chaos created by the violent earthquake that devastated the south of the country, press reports Thursday .
The February 6 earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, devastated this province bordering Syria and killed nearly 40,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
The 55-year-old man, who came from Ankara, introduced himself as a former retired police officer at the reception of a private establishment in the city of Samandag and claimed a baby whose name he stated, reports the official Anadolu news agency.
In a 20-second video broadcast by the Turkish agency and widely picked up by Turkish channels, an apparently distressed man in a dark jacket comes up and asks for the baby before screams ring out to sound the alarm.
The suspect was then arrested and handcuffed.
The police found on the suspect several false identity cards and a large sum of money, 53,000 Turkish liras, or more than 2,600 euros.
The man also had a weapon in his car “with two magazines and 42 rounds of ammunition”, said the private channel NTV.
Turkey’s Ministry of Family said Wednesday that 1,396 unaccompanied children have been identified in the provinces affected by the earthquake. Among them, 508 were returned to their families.