Cold weather, political tensions, aftershocks and damaged road infrastructure have hampered the search for survivors in Turkey and Syria after Monday’s earthquake that has killed more than 5,000 people.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed 3,549 in Turkey and 1,602 in Syria, according to reports from authorities in Damascus and rescue teams in rebel zones. It was the second strongest quake in a century and the deadliest in 24 years. The Turkish government estimates that 5,775 buildings have collapsed.
On Tuesday morning, the United Nations announced that the flow of aid from Turkey to northwest Syria has been temporarily halted due to road damage and other logistical problems.
“Some roads are damaged, others are inaccessible. There are logistical issues that need to be resolved,” Madevi Sun-Suona, UN spokesperson for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, told Reuters. “We don’t know when services will resume.”
El-Mostafa Benlamlih, the UN coordinator in Damascus, told Reuters that many people had spent the night sleeping outdoors or in cars, often in freezing temperatures, without access to basic items such as jackets and mattresses.
“The infrastructure has been damaged, as well as the roads we use for humanitarian work. We will have to find creative solutions to reach people,” he said. Even before the earthquake, the organization estimated that more than 4 million people in the northwest of the country depended on donations that came from outside the border.
The cold and ice also hampered rescue operations in southern Turkey, according to Murat Harun Öngören, Akut coordinator. The organization is one of the largest civil society organizations in the country in terms of rescue and humanitarian aid. To the British newspaper The Guardian, Öngören said that the risk of those trapped under rubble increases every hour. “Ensuring that people receive adequate help in the first 72 hours after such large and catastrophic earthquakes is not easy,” he said.
The earthquake hit remote areas where rescue was not enough, according to local residents. This is the case of Ali Ünlü, a resident of the city of Adıyaman who spoke with the Guardian. He has been trying to remove your mother from the ruins of her house since Monday.
“After the earthquake, I ran to my mother’s house and saw the building collapsed. I was devastated. I waited for rescue workers, but they didn’t show up. I started calling the authorities, but all the lines were cut,” he says.
“It’s very cold and we don’t have any food,” he says. “It’s been 24 hours and my mother is still trapped under the rubble. I don’t know if she’s still alive or not. Resources are very scarce, but I feel that organization is lacking.”
In Syria, even international humanitarian aid could be impacted, according to experts, as a civil war has raged in the country for almost 12 years, dividing the territory and making it difficult to provide effective assistance to the population.
“Syria remains a grim issue from a legal and diplomatic point of view,” said Marc Schakal, program director for Doctors Without Borders in Syria. In an interview with the AFP news agency, he said he feared that local and international NGOs working in the territory would end up overloaded, since the negotiation of humanitarian aid with countries is sensitive.
Bashar al-Assad’s regime is isolated internationally and is subject to sanctions – Russia, one of its few allies, was one of the only countries that promised to immediately send emergency teams, in addition to providing 300 Russian soldiers camped nearby to help with rescues.
Meanwhile, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bassam Sabbagh, had assured that the aid received would be destined to “all Syrians, throughout the territory”. But he imposed one condition: that the aid be distributed by the regime itself. “Accesses from Syria exist and can be coordinated,” stated the diplomat.
The problem is that provinces like Idlib, a stronghold in the north of the country controlled by rebels and jihadists, do not maintain bridges with Damascus. Almost all humanitarian aid arriving in the area today comes from Turkey and passes through Bab al Hawa, an access point created based on a UN resolution — and which, for both al-Assad and Moscow, represents a violation of sovereignty. Syria.
At the head of the French NGO Mehad, Raphaël Pitti, responsible for the French NGO Mehad, says that the areas under Damascus’ control will probably receive international aid, “as has always been the case for ten years”. But he fears that the people of Idlib, home to 2.8 million desperately displaced people, will be left behind, especially as Turkish authorities are already overwhelmed with their own earthquake-ravaged areas.
For now, a source in the German government, one of those committed to Syria, said they intend to use “the usual channels” of NGOs. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said that help must reach people by all possible means.
The director of the WHO (World Health Organization), Adelheid Marschang, drew attention to the fact that Damascus will possibly need more help from the international community than its neighbor, in the short and medium term, due to its lower capacity to respond. —the humanitarian crisis in the country has deepened even more in recent months, when the population had already started to live with shortages of fuel and electricity in the midst of one of the most rigorous winters in its history.
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