As a nurse working near the front lines of the Syrian war, Ibrahim Zidan endured many desperate moments, including when shelling destroyed a hospital, leaving her trapped under rubble.
But he says the February 6 earthquake in the area has proved to be the toughest challenge yet for doctors in the rebel-held territory, with health facilities already overwhelmed by more than a decade of conflict.
On the night of the disaster, Zeidan oversaw the evacuation of infants from the hospital where he was working in the city of Al-Dana. CCTV footage of the hospital showed masonry falling and equipment moving due to the quake.
“We had children on oxygen, so we couldn’t provide for them or find available space because all the hospitals were full,” said Zeidan, 33. hospital.
“The earthquake was the hardest because everything was lost – electricity, oxygen, heating for the children,” he said in an interview at a hospital in al-Qah, where he had been working since the quake.
More than 4,500 people have been reported killed and 8,300 injured in the earthquake in northwestern Syria, according to the United Nations – the bulk of casualties from Syria, a country torn apart by civil war since 2011.
Hospitals in the rebel-held northwest have been repeatedly shelled in the war: in 2019, more than 60 medical facilities were attacked over a six-month period in the northwest Idlib region, and government-allied forces appears to have been deliberately targeted by the United Nations, a UN rights spokesman said at the time.