Idlib, Reyhanli The earthquake surprised Ahmed Al-Halabi in his sleep: at dawn on February 6, his house collapsed, burying his wife, son and himself under rubble. The family stayed there for two days, between life and death, before they were rescued by helpers. “After they got us out, my son died,” says Ahmed Al-Halabi, who is now being treated in a clinic in northern Syria’s Idlib. His feet are broken, one hand too. “I’m in so much pain I couldn’t even go to my son’s funeral,” says the 28-year-old.
Just 100 hours after the catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake, the Syrian civil defense forces, the White Helmets, counted 2,166 dead in more than 40 towns and villages. There are now more than 4,300 across the country. In some places, the deceased are buried in shrouds, and a piece of wood serves as a tombstone. It is cold in the mountainous region of northwestern Syria, with snow still on the slopes. Many roads are unpaved, and people with their old cars and pickups have a hard time driving up the hill in the mud of the melted snow.
In Turkey and Syria, the series of earthquakes left devastation in its wake that is otherwise only known from wars. In north-west Syria, people are familiar with the scenes from the civil war that has shaken the country for 12 years: houses destroyed, people displaced, hope lost.
In Syria, for example, according to the UN, many people who had been displaced within the country because of the war have found shelter in dilapidated housing. After the tremors, they have now also lost this – and that in freezing temperatures. “Those affected urgently need support,” says Chris Melzer from the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
More than four million people live in the region affected by the earthquake alone. The aid organization Caritas expects that many of the Syrian internally displaced persons could now try to travel to relatives in Germany – and this at a time when the EU may want to tighten its asylum and migration policy again.
“We could have saved many more people”
In contrast to the Turkish side, far fewer international aid supplies are coming to the region. “Since the first quake, we have sent requests for help to various countries and world organizations, including the UN, to rescue as many people as possible from under the rubble,” said Fatima Obeid, a 26-year-old White Helmets volunteer.
We have failed the people of north-west Syria so far. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths
“The situation is unbearable to catastrophic. We have been at war here for 12 years, and now the Syrian people in this region are also suffering severely from the consequences of the earthquake.” In some cases, entire families are buried under the rubble.
“We could have saved many more people if we had the technology and heavy machinery needed to lift rubble,” she told Al-Jazeera TV. “All relief supplies and necessary food provided to the overcrowded relief centers will be donated by volunteers, civil organizations and local charities.”
For a long time nothing came from the United Nations and its member states. After the catastrophe, the United Nations also admitted that they had failed. “We have failed the people of north-west Syria so far,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths on Sunday during a visit to the Syrian-Turkish border region.
Syrian government allows supplies to rebel-held areas
These people feel they have been abandoned. “They’re on the lookout for international aid that hasn’t arrived.” It’s his duty to have those errors corrected as soon as possible, Griffiths said.
In Turkey, an international machinery of professional disaster relief has long been up and running. Volunteers from 96 countries offered help. They help to rescue the living from under the rubble, set up tents, take care of the injured or cook soup. “We’re traumatized,” says 22-year-old Dilek from the Turkish border town of Antakya, “but at least we get everything we need.”
In comparison, the millions of Syrians who were also affected by the series of earthquakes are almost forgotten abroad. The Syrian government announced Friday that it has authorized the delivery of humanitarian aid to earthquake-hit areas outside of its control.
However, a UN spokesman said on Sunday that earthquake aid from government-held parts of Syria to the north-western territory has been held up by “permission issues” with the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group.
The first shipment of UN aid arrived in northern Syria on Thursday, three days after the earthquake disaster. Another convoy of 14 trucks, including material for accommodation such as tents, followed on Friday. On Saturday, 22 more trucks crossed the Turkish-Syrian border with goods from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN children’s fund Unicef, among others.
According to the United Nations, supplies to the areas not held by the government are faltering.
(Photo: AP)
Everyone has to go to Syria via the only open border crossing in Reyhanli, Turkey. A bottleneck, because the neighboring Turkish region was also severely affected by the earthquake. Traffic is jammed everywhere, it’s not easy to get to the border.
According to Raed al-Saleh, head of Syria’s civil defense, the two convoys that passed through on Thursday and Friday – 20 trucks in total – were also only transporting “scheduled aid”, which is regularly delivered to refugee families and includes sugar, flour and cooking oil. But no blankets, tents or medicine. “It was no help for the families and people in the cities who were in the disaster area of the quake,” he said on Saturday.
Fuel for the recovery equipment is missing
The rescuers had to face many difficulties in the vast area. On the one hand, there was a lack of fuel to operate the large rescue equipment for such a long time. Technical equipment, such as heat sensors and cameras, was also missing. A lack of international help made it difficult to rescue the buried people.
There are aid organizations on site, including foreign ones. Malteser International, for example, the international aid organization of the Order of Malta, supports six hospitals in the region, as well as a maternity clinic with a children’s hospital and eight basic health stations in the Idlib regions and in North Aleppo in north-west Syria.
“Fortunately, the hospitals we support in north-western Syria are only slightly damaged and fully operational,” explains Oliver Hochedez, head of emergency aid at Malteser International, “but there is a lack of medical consumables, first-aid kits, trauma kits and medication”. The doctors in the hospitals supported by the organization have been working at the limit since Monday morning, they say. “Even before the quake, the health care for the people in the region was almost impossible to manage,” reports Hochedez, who coordinates the aid with his team from the Turkish border town of Kilis. “Now there are a lot of injuries. A hundred additional operations have been carried out since the earthquake.”
The need for medical care is immense. Orthopedic aids are also needed for the many injured. “We are working flat out to procure the required goods as quickly as possible. In Syria, this is still possible via the local markets,” says Hochedez.
“We don’t know what we can do now,” says Abdul Rahman Jadoua. The 50-year-old, originally from a village south of Aleppo, has lost his wife. She had woken him when the earth was shaking. As they ran out of the house, it collapsed. “The house fell on our heads,” says Jadoua. They were stuck in the rubble for five hours. He and his children survived, his wife died.
Disappointment follows panic, fear and sadness
Now the Syrian lives and sleeps with his children under trees in the city of Salqin, west of Idlib, despite the cold. There are no emergency shelters. “We are waiting for an aid organization that will come and give us a roof over our heads,” says Jadoua. The United Nations estimates that up to 5.3 million people have been made homeless in Syria alone.
Thousands of buildings in north-west Syria were damaged in the earthquake.
(Photo: Reuters)
The Syrian refugees on the Turkish side of the border are also having a hard time. Not only because most of the approximately four million people seeking protection live in the border area and thus in the region hardest hit by the earthquake. But above all because they are made the scapegoat for a lot of what is happening there.
For example, after looting in supermarkets and houses became known. On Twitter, many complained that Syrian gangs in particular were roaming the villages in the evenings and threatening people. It is unclear where the refugees could suddenly get their weapons from.
A tweet by extremist opposition politician Ümit Özdag attracted particular attention. A photo he shared shows a young man in a blue jacket holding a red mobile phone, with a helper standing next to him. Özdag’s comment: “The Syrian boy steals the mobile phone of a Turkish helper and the television records it live.” Thousands shared the tweet and apparently took Özdag’s comment at face value. Alone, the boy is Turkish, and he later proved on television that it was his own mobile phone.
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On this side of the border, in the Syrian region of Idlib, the civil defense helpers are now recovering hardly any survivors. The cold and the inflammation of their wounds affected the buried people, reports the civil defense. “In addition, many other buildings collapsed during our rescues due to the aftershocks.” Almost 500 houses were completely destroyed, more than 1,400 partially.
“The situation will remain tense,” explains Malteser emergency aid manager Hochedez. “There is a need in all areas and after the rescue the aid has to move into a new phase,” he says. “Fixed accommodation must come, medical aid must be expanded.”
40-year-old Heba Al-Ali is also homeless. After almost all the houses in her village of Al-Taloul west of Idlib were destroyed by the earthquake, it was also flooded. The quake had destroyed the dams that had previously protected them from the waters of the Orontes River. “We had to flee our village. Now we have no home.”
Moawia Atrash is a freelance journalist based in Idlib, Syria. He himself lost an aunt in the earthquake.
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