As humanitarian aid trucks rolled into opposition-held northwest Syria on Thursday, bringing the first international aid there since Monday’s devastating earthquake, rescue workers scrambling to reach the last trapped survivors called for more international aid.
Seventy countries have offered to send rescue teams or humanitarian aid to Turkey, the country’s president said this week, but the international response has been markedly different for Syria, a sanctioned pariah state deeply divided after years of civil war.
“Our teams have been working non-stop for the past 75 hours, without a break, without a break,” Mohamed al-Shibli, a member of the White Helmets civil defense group that operates in opposition-held parts of Syria, said in an interview via WhatsApp. The group won international reputation for rescuing wounded civilians during Syria’s years of civil war, but has focused on rescue and recovery efforts in the days following the quake.
Some team members take a five-minute break, Mr al-Shibli said, but many don’t take any breaks at all, and some have passed out from the exertion. “I’m genuinely scared for her physical situation.”
All of this adds to the emotional weight of the task.
“Some people in rubble share their will with the team,” Mr al-Shibli said. “Under the rubble, they ask them to deliver messages, they share the names of their loved ones, then they die.”
Through tears, he pleaded with the United Nations to send rescue teams and spare equipment as rescue workers continue to comb through the rubble as hope of finding survivors dwindles. He expressed frustration and anger at the nature of supplies being delivered to the country in Thursday’s aid convoy, which he says were collected ahead of Monday’s earthquake.
“It’s just simple help that doesn’t cover the disaster,” lamented Mr al-Shibli, saying it included general items like diapers. “What will children do under the rubble with diapers?”
According to a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the relief trucks were carrying “shelter materials” and “non-food items.”
Almost three million people already lived there, displaced by the years of civil war in Syria precarious circumstances in the opposition-held areas of the north-west of the country, and many already have survive a brutal winter without heating when the earthquake came.
“Before the earthquake, we had supply shortages – now our demand has only increased,” said Dr. Mohamed al-Abrash, a surgeon at Idlib Central Hospital in north-west Syria, where he has admitted hundreds of patients since Monday.
Before the earthquake, 60-year-old Dr. al-Abrash, his hospital lacks sufficient critical medicines and basic materials such as operating tables and bandages. Now the emergency room is in dire need of specialized equipment, such as dialysis machines, he said, to treat an influx of patients suffering from kidney failure caused by serious injuries.
“We are forced to wait while people die on the streets,” he said. “We must put politics aside – we are in a catastrophe.”
Many survivors in the areas hard-hit by the quake refused to return home as buildings continued to collapse, he said. Residents built makeshift shelters in the streets where they slept in freezing temperatures. “There are children who are dying of hypothermia,” he said, adding that the limited medical resources available would be prioritized for those rescued from the rubble.
It’s not just the opposition-held areas that are struggling. dr Ghassan Fandi, head of a consortium of doctors in the regime-controlled areas of Syria, said international sanctions are preventing medical equipment from reaching Syrian hospitals, particularly spare parts for Western-made machines.
“We need equipment for emergencies,” said Dr. fandi
In recent years, there have been no large-scale efforts to rebuild Syria’s devastated infrastructure, including its healthcare system. The Assad regime has partly blamed it Western sanctionsand has used the earthquake disaster to call for the sanctions against it to be lifted.
