Damascus.
While aid is being rolled out in Turkey after the devastating earthquake, Syria is lacking everything. Why the help is not arriving.
While rescue workers from 36 countries are now deployed in south-east Turkey, people in neighboring Syria are still largely on their own. “We need big cranes and heavy equipment to do this tragedy deal with it,” Munir Mustafa, deputy head of the White Helmets rescue organization, told dpa on Thursday. Everything is missing: emergency services, doctors, medication, drinking water and food.
They become more difficult Rescue and salvage work, because there are hardly any functioning state structures in the region. Parts of the area are controlled by rebels. The Assad regime is not sending aid supplies to the north because they could fall into the hands of “terrorists,” as they say in Damascus. Other areas are controlled by the Turkish army. Ankara has militarily occupied parts of northern Syria since 2016 with three military operations to keep Kurdish militias away from the border.
Syria: Assad is holding back aid for political reasons
The situation of the earthquake victims is also critical because even before the earthquake as a result of the eleven year civil warthe fighting between rival groups in the north and the bombardment by the Turkish army destroyed the infrastructure, hospitals and residential areas in many places.
Assad is probably holding back aid for the disaster area because he now sees an opportunity to relax the West’s sanctions. Meanwhile, the USA is banking on bringing support to the earthquake victims without cooperating with the outlawed regime in Damascus. However, it is not yet clear how this is to be done.
Read here: Earthquake – mother gives birth to baby under rubble
Syrians sought refuge in Turkey – and died in the earthquake
Aid supplies could most likely be sent via Turkey northern Syria reach. But Hatay Airport is no longer operational because the quake destroyed the only runway. The road connections to the only border crossing, Bab al-Hawa, were initially interrupted. In the meantime, the roads have been repaired to such an extent that on Thursday the first six trucks with aid supplies from the UN Syrian disaster area reached.
However, these were deliveries that had been put together for the war refugees in northern Syria before the earthquake. The Syrian journalist Mustafa Dahnon had previously reported that “so far only corpses have come from Turkey.” They are the corpses of Syrians who had sought refuge from the civil war in Turkey and died there in the earthquake.
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