Jinderis, Syria: Even children are still trying to get what can still be saved from the rubble of their home.Image: AP / Ghaith Alsayed
politics
Some parts of Syria were already in ruins before the earthquake. Now many people have once again had the roof over their heads taken away – not by air raids, but by the shifting of tectonic plates.
Chantal Stäubli / watson.ch
Countless buildings that were leveled to the ground. Children rescued from rubble. sniffer dogs trying People to sniff out among the ruins. The pictures of the earthquake on the Turkish-Syrian border only show a part of the extent of the devastation.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 23 million people are in Turkey and in Syria affected by the earthquake. The death toll has now risen to more than 8,100, and almost 40,000 people are injured.
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The epicenter of the quake was in western Turkey, near the city of Gaziantep, which has a population of two million, according to the US earthquake observatory. The tremors were throughout central Turkey, northern Syria, as well as Cyprus, Lebanon, and Greece Israel to feel.
“Crisis within a crisis within a crisis.”
Mark Kaye, Middle East Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
The humanitarian situation is particularly precarious in the cities of Aleppo and Idlib, which are already plagued by civil war. Even before the earthquake, entire provinces in northern Syria were razed to the ground as a result of the war and the infrastructure was badly damaged.
A man tries to identify the bodies of earthquake victims recovered outside a hospital in Aleppo.Image: AP / Omar Sanadiki
There was no money for reconstruction. Many people lived in fragile and collapsing buildings or in refugee camps.
Now many of these shelters have also been destroyed. The ground was pulled out from under the feet of the people again. Mark Kaye, Middle East director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), describes the situation in northern Syria as “a crisis within a crisis within a crisis”.
The situation of a country already suffering from the consequences of the civil war:
Overcrowded hospitals
Hospitals and clinics are being flooded with injured people, the corridors are overcrowded and there is a lack of staff and equipment, according to the South African non-governmental organization Gift of the Givers, which is leading earthquake relief efforts in Syria.
“All our beds are full – people have to lie on the floor. Soon there will be no free space on the floor either.”
dr Imtiaz Sooliman from Gift of the Givers
British doctor Shajul Islam, who has been working in a hospital in the city of Idlib for seven years, speaks of the “worst days” of his career.
Opposite of AP news agency he says: “I remove a patient from the ventilator and immediately use the device on the next patient. In between I have to decide which patient has the better chance of survival.”
People carry a man injured in an earthquake to a hospital in Idlib, northern Syria.Image: AP / Ghaith Alsayed
Precisely because many hospitals in the area are not operational due to the war, they are now struggling with an enormous overload of the health care system.
“Hospitals don’t have enough resources to deal with such a disaster.”
dr Osama Salloum
But also due to a lack of resources, the queues in the hospitals are getting longer. “Most of the people rescued from the rubble have serious injuries that require special treatment and advanced equipment,” says Syrian doctor Osama Salloum to the BBC. The problem: In the hospital in Aleppo where he works, there is only an old computer tomograph.
unreachable areas
The rescue teams had reached their limits, due to the lack of personnel, many areas could not be reached, as Salloum reports. The extent of the catastrophe can therefore not yet be weighed.
Bodies are recovered from the rubble of a building in the city of Harem.Image: dpa / Anas Alkharboutli
closed borders
Disaster relief is also made more difficult because of the closed borders. Patients cannot be transferred to Turkey. Entry into north-west Syria, the country’s rebel-held enclave, is also made more difficult.
The government in Damascus only allows aid supplies to be imported via a small border crossing on the Turkish border. The UN is currently working on a solution.
Russian soldiers and Syrian security forces inspect the rubble of collapsed buildings in Aleppo.Image: AP / Omar Sanadiki
Destroyed refugee camps
In northern Syria there are many refugee accommodations for around 6.8 million internally displaced persons. Around 62,000 Palestinian refugees also live in the camps. Until now. Because: Many of these camps were destroyed by the earthquakes.
The people of the damaged shelters are the Reuters news agency exposed to near-freezing temperatures and heavy rainfall. Many have taken shelter on buses to warm up and for fear of another earthquake.
A woman with children stands in front of a residential building in Aleppo that was destroyed by an earthquake.Image: www.imago-images.de/SNA
memory of the war
The current situation is reopening old wounds. The Syrian doctor Salom strongly reminds the current situation of the bomb attacks in Aleppo, when numerous houses were destroyed and civilians killed Life came.
“The situation is reminiscent of a war zone – it brings back traumatic memories for many people.”
dr Osama Salloum
Hopes for a lasting stabilization of the country are probably also buried under the rubble.
This confirms the Prognosis by Carsten HansenRegional Director for the Middle East at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC): The disaster will worsen the suffering of Syrians who are already grappling with a serious humanitarian crisis.
Millions of people have already been displaced from their homes to another region – now many more would be displaced by disaster.
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