‘really sad’
Across the border, in Syria, relief efforts have been hampered by a civil war that has torn apart the country and divided regional and global powers.
“It is clear that the area of greatest concern at the moment is the region of northwestern Syria,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme, told a briefing in Geneva.
“The impact of the earthquake is significant in areas of Syria controlled by the government, but the services are there and those people have access.”
Civil war hostilities have disrupted at least two attempts to send aid to the northwest from elsewhere in Syria, but one aid convoy reached the area overnight.
Organized by Arab tribesmen, a Reuters reporter said trucks carrying blankets, food, medical supplies and tents arrived overnight in the rebel-held northwest from an area controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
“The situation is really sad,” said Abdulrahman Mohammed, a displaced Syrian originally from the neighboring province of Aleppo, in Idlib, where many have taken refuge from other war-torn provinces over the past decade.
Parts of the provinces of Idlib and nearby Aleppo, held by Turkish-backed rebels, accounted for the bulk of the earthquake’s casualties in Syria: more than 4,400 of the 5,800 killed, according to the United Nations and government officials.
Some were lucky enough to escape.
In the Syrian Mediterranean town of Jableh, Um Kanan described how she woke up her three children and took them to a small closet in her bedroom for shelter.
The force of the earthquake leveled their fourth-floor apartment to the ground, but all four survived.
“I kept thinking to myself: ‘Could this be happening? Did the building just collapse? Is this a dream?’ I tried to move but I couldn’t,” she said. “The kids and I, by some miracle, got into this little space I had left empty.”
