People walk past collapsed buildings in the town of Jinderis in Syria’s Aleppo province on Thursday, days after a strong earthquake devastated the area.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
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Ghaith Alsayed/AP
People walk past collapsed buildings in the town of Jinderis in Syria’s Aleppo province on Thursday, days after a strong earthquake devastated the area.
Ghaith Alsayed/AP
JINDERIS, Syria – Mohammed Juma sleeps on the heap of rubble that crushed his family as he survived. In the freezing nights, the 20-year-old and other residents of this town – still dazed and in shock – burn belongings found in the debris for warmth.
For five days, they have been waiting for help. None came.
In neighboring Turkey, roads are blocked by trucks transporting everything from diggers to food, blankets and medicine to the quake-hit area. Thousands of tons of aid poured in from countries around the world. The arrival of special equipment to detect those still trapped under the rubble means that, days after the earthquake, lives are still being saved.
In contrast, across the border in northwest Syria, residents of the town of Jinderis heard the cries of those trapped under the rubble but, without the proper machinery and equipment, they were powerless to save them.
Now the voices have died down.
” We do not understand. Why are we alone? asked Mahmoud Hafar, the mayor of Jinderis.
Personal belongings are seen in Jinderis, Syria on Friday amid the tangle of rubble from a destroyed building.
Ruth Sherlock/NPR
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Ruth Sherlock/NPR
Personal belongings are seen in Jinderis, Syria on Friday amid the tangle of rubble from a destroyed building.
Ruth Sherlock/NPR
In a rare visit to this rebel-held enclave of a country broken and isolated by more than a decade of civil war, NPR saw no international rescue teams; no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid; no streams of ambulances to save the wounded. The border crossing to Syria was empty and silent.
Mohammed Juma said his wife, Alia, and two children – Ali, 20 months and Hussein, 6 months – were alive after their house collapsed on top of them. Juma and his neighbors tugged at the broken concrete for hours until their hands bled, but the effort was in vain.
Now Syrian Civil Defense teams are using the few excavators they have to retrieve the dead. Friday morning in Jinderis, at least 850 bodies had been extracted from the rubble. Zakaria Tabakh, 26, recalls cuddling his son, Abdulhadi, 2, to sleep and laying him in bed, where he was killed by falling debris. Tabakh’s wife died in the bed next to him. He said few friends were able to come to the funeral because they were too busy burying loved ones.
On Friday, Syrian civil protection workers in the town of Jinderis search the rubble of a collapsed residential building for a 13-year-old boy and four other people.
Ruth Sherlock/NPR
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On Friday, Syrian civil protection workers in the town of Jinderis search the rubble of a collapsed residential building for a 13-year-old boy and four other people.
Ruth Sherlock/NPR
At one site, diggers lifted huge chunks of concrete and twisted iron bars, searching for a 13-year-old boy. Hundreds more people are missing.
The earthquake is just the latest cruelty to befall the people of this region.
Many of the 4.6 million residents had fled here from other parts of the country, seeking safety from barrel bombs and airstrikes by the Syrian regime and its ally Russia.
After years of war, they have nothing left. Tens of thousands of people now live with almost no access to basic services in makeshift tents pitched in the olive groves where mud clogs and weighs down the legs of children playing outside.
Even before this earthquake, the United Nations declared that 4.1 million people needed humanitarian assistance. The Syrian regime considers providing aid to these opposition-held areas across the Turkish border to be a violation of its sovereignty. The government, along with its allies Russia and China, have repeatedly vetoed the UN Security Council to maintain more routes for aid to Syria from Turkey.
Aid convoys are only allowed at one border point, Bab al-Hawa. But the roads between the UN supply center in Turkey and this border post were damaged by the earthquake, so that for several days other border crossing points opened with Syria remained unused and no help arrived.
Residents walk past a damaged water reservoir in the Syrian town of Sawran on Friday, days after a strong earthquake hit the area.
Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images
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Residents walk past a damaged water reservoir in the Syrian town of Sawran on Friday, days after a strong earthquake hit the area.
Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Less than an hour’s drive from one of the open border crossing points, the town of Sawran has no running water. On one side of the main street is the destroyed house of the Turki family, where nine people, including five children, died. On the other side of the road, a family of seven was killed. Neighbors said they moved to Sawran after fleeing their home in Khan Sheikhoun, where in 2017 the Syrian government attacked the population with the nerve agent Sarin, killing 89 people.
“The world has left us to our fate in the face of criminal Bashar al-Assad. But this is a natural disaster,” stated Ibahim Bakkour, a neighborhood council member. “There is no political argument here; it is a humanitarian situation and we need help.”
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