The Hilton Prize: More Power to Stop Human Suffee: The Case for Non-Norwegians During the War and Conflict

Jan Egeland does not speak in a calm manner, but is more animated when discussing the record number of people displaced by humanitarian crises across the globe.

Last year we helped over 10 million refugees and displaced people; this year we need to reach even more. The enemies are bigger and worse, so we need to be quicker and smarter, responding to crises earlier, providing support for the longer term and helping people to become self-reliant as soon as possible. The money will help us with staff development because we can only accomplish that with local colleagues. In Afghanistan we have 1,400 humanitarian workers and just 25 of them are international. In general, 99% of our staff are non-Norwegian. Conflict prevention can be helped by this funding, as it will allow us to concentrate on mediation between warring groups and farmers competing for land and water resources.

In recognition of these efforts, the council this year has been awarded the world’s largest annual humanitarian award for a nonprofit — worth $2.5 million.

This award could not have come at more important time for us because we are challenged like never before. Our advocacy for targeted civilians has also made us become a target for authoritarian regimes and parties to armed conflicts who do not like the truth to be told to the world. With the recognition and backing of the Hilton Prize we can do that with more authority and greater resources. It’s a considerable sum of money, but of equal importance is the recognition and prestige. I believe that this prize is for humanitarian work.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/10/20/1129199362/a-2-5-million-prize-gives-this-humanitarian-group-more-power-to-halt-human-suffe

UNICEICE: Refugees and Disdisplaced People in the Vicinity of the War. The Nordic Council on Human Rights and the Status of the Convention

The secretary general of the council is a former Norwegian foreign minister and head of Human Rights Watch. He spoke with NPR about overlooked crises, equal protection for all refugees and reasons to hope after he returned from a trip to India in June.

We help refugees and displaced people in conflict areas. We were established in 1946 just after the liberation of Norway from Nazi occupation. At the time, Norway was a poor country receiving Marshall Aid assistance from the United States, but our founders saw that the situation was even worse for most of the rest of Europe. Our early relief efforts focused on refugees in Austria, Germany, Poland and the Balkans — and it grew from there. Today we have 16,000 field workers in most of the biggest crises and wars of our time, from Ukraine to Colombia, from Congo to Myanmar.

Even before the earthquakes, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that more than half of northwest Syria’s 4.7 million people are internally displaced, and around 70% of those are living in temporary accommodation (often in tented cities). More than three million do not have enough to eat and one-third are disabled, many because of the war. Health-care facilities have been targeted, leaving only 66 hospitals still functioning, but poorly equipped, amid an ongoing cholera outbreak.

Ukrainian refugees receive a lot of media attention and funding. The Russian invasion was launched in February. What has changed for Ukrainian refugees?

The NRC has been in Ukraine since the 2014 Donbas conflict, but now the situation is much worse, with trench warfare and the destruction of entire cities engulfing millions of civilians. Some areas have become more stable where we can help internally displaced people, and some people are returning from abroad after fleeing. Others are being driven out of the south and east of the country at the same time. I fear for the winter. Millions will be freezing soon so we are preparing a winterization program and strengthening logistic lines from the neighboring states.

It’s a good thing that we want to help our neighbor who looks like us, has the same religion and can easily integrate in our societies but we should give protection according to need. The people from the Middle East are not welcomed in Europe while the Ukrainians are. In the U.S., women and children fleeing horrible violence in central America are not always well received. This is a battle of values, and we must stand squarely on the side of those who need protection.

We live by humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. This means we teach our colleagues not to take sides and not to get close to a government which is a party to the conflict. We still need to have respect for and protection of those parties. It pains me when we can’t work in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukranian.

It is now over a year since the West left Afghanistan, leaving behind 40 million mainly women and children, and they need our solidarity now more than ever. There needs to be more engagement with the donor countries on issues such as girls’ education and minority protection. The wrong response is to impose sanctions that will not affect the lives of Taliban soldiers and will make women and children starve.

Yes, I’m afraid of that. One hundred million people have now for the first time in recorded history been displaced by war and violence. It was 40 million in 2011. There has never been in modern times as many children going to bed hungry as there are this year. In the places where we operate, it is significantly worse that a country is struggling with high energy prices and nationalism at home.

It’s truly dramatic. I saw mothers and fathers walking for hundreds of kilometers to seek water and food. We need development, investment, resilience and better use of existing resources. We are part of a group of nine national and international NGOs which were formed to balance short-term humanitarian needs with longer-term community preparedness. I witnessed dams being built, and bore holes equipped with solar-powered pumps so people can start to feed themselves independently.

Support the international NGOs. To live by the rules of compassion and solidarity, we need to write to politicians. Reach out to those refugees and migrants who come to our communities, befriend them, help them integrate.

It is a time of horrific contrasts. Never have there been so many displaced by violence and conflict, and so many with no chance to feed themselves. Climate change, carbon dioxide and conflict combine to create a lethal cocktail. But the good news is that never have there been more effective national and international humanitarian and development organizations, better technological advances and greater resources. The bottom two billion people have never been elevated because there has never been as many billionaires. Those at the top have lots of money and could help us reach people in need.

I come back an optimist whenever I return from visiting colleagues working in difficult and dangerous circumstances. When I am interviewing children about what they want to be when they’re old, they don’t want to be fighters or soldiers or terrorists or criminals; they want to be doctors, engineers, farmers and builders.

The First Day of Emergency Operations in Turkey After the September 11 Earthquake: Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Kahramanmaras

ANTAKYA and ISTANBUL, Turkey — Rescue workers in Turkey and Syria pushed into a third day of recovery operations on Wednesday as the death toll from this week’s massive earthquake reached a grim milestone.

As Turkey’s death toll rises — now more than 17,000 — so does criticism of the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and what many see as its lack of preparation and sluggish response to the tragedy. The situation got under control “second day and then today,” insisted the president, after admitting that the first day had some pains.

The President of Turkey spoke to the people of Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter of the earthquake, telling them that they are facing a great disaster. There is growing public anger that the rescue response has been slow, and Erdogan acknowledged there were shortfalls by his government in the immediate aftermath of the quake. The president cited winter weather conditions and destroyed infrastructure, including airport runways, as complicating factors.

“I know my son is inside and I think he’s still alive. She said that his brother dug with his hands to find him. Hours later, as diggers chipped away at the ruins of the building, rescuers found Sedat’s body and wrapped it in a blanket for his mother to say goodbye.

The earthquake and reconstruction in Gaziantep, a region of southeast Caucasus, that has affected UN aid for the last 100 years

Already, UN aid to the region has been disrupted due to damage inflicted on roads by the earthquake, the UN has said. The Bab al-Hawa crossing is the sole humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria.

Aid convoys are allowed only through one border point, Bab al-Hawa. The roads between the UN supply hub in Turkey and this border point were damaged in the earthquake and so for a few days, no aid came.

Crowded into white tents set up by Turkey’s disaster and emergency relief arm, known by the acronym AFAD, families of eight or more are sleeping on foam mattresses on the ground. Wrapped in the clothes they were wearing at the time of the quake, and in donated, colorful blankets, mothers, daughters, brothers and fathers huddle to keep warm.

The earthquake that hit the region left many people dead and many injured, as well as being among the strongest to hit the area in more than 100 years.

The North Anatolian fault and the East Anatolian fault are both located on the Anatolian plate. Turkey is being squeezed out towards the west by the movement of the plate that carries Arabia and is colliding with the southern rim of Eurasia, says David Rothery. He states that Turkey is moving west by 2 centimetres a year. The fault is being lit up by earthquakes.

There was a main earthquake that happened east of the city of Nurdai at a depth of 17.9 kilometres. There were earthquakes around the 4 kilometres southeast of Ekinz in the Kahramanmara province.

In a study published last March, Arzu Arslan Kelam and her colleagues said that the center of Gaziantep would experience medium-to-severe damage from a magnitude-6.5 earthquake. This is because most existing buildings are low-rise brick structures that are constructed very close to each other.

Hayek said that there was a shortage of engineers in northwest Syria and that buildings would need to be rebuilt. Before the earthquake, “we talked about a need to train engineers on reconstruction according to appropriate safety standards”, Hayek says. “This has grown into a necessity now,” he says.

Heavy machines have been brought into the area where a day earlier cautious searched with their hands. The risk of being trapped alive must be taken into account against the odds of surviving long in the cold.

The body of a little girl wrapped in a blanket, was pulled from the rubble of a building in Turkey on Wednesday. She’s one of the latest young victims of Monday’s massive quake.

Elsewhere, excavators dug out the body of man believed to be a Syrian refugee in his 40s, who seemed to be on a mattress, like many of those who died after the quake struck around 4 a.m.

In a neighboring building, also collapsed, rescuers were digging down from the top to try to reach one or possibly two people thought to be alive. A generator was brought up to power a pneumatic hand-operated drill; the man directing it cleared away the rubble with his bare hands.

He seemed to have spotted some signs of life underneath the wreck, but rescuers told him that there was still a lot of work to be done.

There are at least 350 bodies in the hospital’s morgue that have not been collected by relatives, according to a man volunteering at the hospital.

Erdogan’s visit to the Kaharamanmaras Emergency Relief Area: a glimpse of the state-of-the-art and recent developments

He was accompanied by officials when he visited the emergency relief area. Row after row of shining white tents could be seen in the sports stadium, destined to house some of the thousands of families who’ve lost their homes.

The government’s goal is to rebuild the Kahramanmaras region in one year and people will receive help with emergency housing, according to a televised update from the relief center by the prime minister.

“We can never let our citizens stay on the streets,” Erdogan said. “Our state is using all its resources with AFAD and municipalities. We will continue to do so.”

He acknowledged the government’s initial response “had some problems” in terms of natural gas supply and roads, but said the situation was “under control.” The government is planning to give 10,000 Turkish liras (around $531 USD) to help families impacted, he added.

Most buildings in the city of Kaharamanmaras have been damaged by earthquakes, although newer structures have not been as badly affected.

At the bottom of the city, many people could be heard crying and lamenting by the tumbled buildings where they or their relatives lived until disaster struck.

A handful clutched photographs of loved ones who are under the rubble, less in hope of their rescue than as an act of remembrance – holding out snaps of their children or wedding pictures and saying “they are gone.”

The Dubai warehouse of the World Health Organization: Disaster response to an earthquake in the region of Perseus, Turkey, according to the head of SANA

A three-month state of emergency has been declared in 10 Turkish provinces, and aid agencies have warned of “catastrophic” repercussions in northwest Syria, where millions of vulnerable and displaced people were already relying on humanitarian support.

The biggest hub the organization has is in Dubai, with 20 warehouses. From here, the organization is sending planeloads of medicine, infusions for intravenous drips and anesthesia, surgical instruments, splints and stretchers, to help with crushing-type injuries from the earthquake.

The head of the World Health Organization arrived in Syria on Saturday with 35 tons of medical equipment, according to state news agency SANA. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will arrive in the coming days.

Color-coded labels help identify which kits are for malaria, cholera, Ebola and polio for countries in need around the world. Emergency health kits with green labels are for Istanbul and Damascus.

The trauma and emergency surgery kits that were used by the WHO in response to the earthquake are mostly used for that.

The Foreign Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development were both run by Blanchard before he joined the WHO. Logistical challenges can be challenging to deal with, but the organization’s warehouses in Dubai help deliver aid quickly to countries in need.

The search and rescue effort after the earthquake was unprecedented in history, although we were left to do what we could with limited resources. The White Helmets got no help from the United Nations during their most critical moments of the rescue operations, and now they don’t have a promise of assistance to help the recovery and rehabilitation efforts.

The weather conditions are not great right now. So it just depends on the condition of the roads, the availability of the trucks and then the permission to cross the border and deliver the humanitarian aid,” he says.

The International Humanitarian City (IHOC): Where are the World’s largest humanitarian hub and where are the people that don’t go home?

The homes of the people that aren’t able to go home because they have not been cleared as being sound are ones that have never been inspected. “They’re literally sleeping and living in the office and trying to do work at the same time.”

The International Humanitarian City is home to the WHO’s warehouses and consists of 1.5 million square feet. The zone is also home to warehouses for the U.N. refugee agency, World Food Program, Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations, UNICEF and others.

Storage facilities, utilities, and flights carrying relief items into affected areas are all covered by the government of Dubai. The inventory is procured by the agencies themselves.

$150 million worth of emergency stock and assistance is sent to between 120 and 150 countries every year. That includes personal protective equipment, tents, food and other critical items needed in climate disasters, medical emergencies and global outbreaks, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The reason we are doing quite a lot and the reason why this hub became the largest one in the world is exactly because of its strategic position,” Saba says. Two-thirds of the world’s population live in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Due to a problem with the plane’s engine, WHO supplies for Damascus were still grounded in Dubai as of Wednesday evening. He said the situation was evolving by the hour and the organization was trying to provide direct flights to the airport.

The story appears in today’s edition of the newspaper. Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. You have to sign up here.

Syrian victims of the devastating earthquake that hit their country and Turkey on Monday may become hostages of the politics that have divided Syria for over a decade, analysts have warned.

“The Assad regime has systematically siphoned off aid and/or blocked it from reaching non-regime areas (in the past),” tweeted Mai El-Sadany, a Washington-based human rights lawyer and managing editor at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “The international community must urgently find ways to ensure that emergency assistance and support reaches the people of northwest Syria.”

Turkey is a NATO member whose international stature has only grown in recent years. Syria, on the other hand, is ruled by a myriad of disparate groups. Iran and Russia are close allies of the regime, which has been ostracized as a result of the suppression of the uprising in 2011.

Most Western countries don’t like the Syrian regime. But leader Bashar al-Assad has begun forging ties with former enemies as regional states welcome him back into the fold. Last year, the United Arab Emirates welcomed Assad in Abu Dhabi, and last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the pair may soon meet for peace talks.

There has been “no investment” in the isolated region for over a decade, said Kieran Barnes, Syria Country Director for the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. Tens of thousands of people are living in temporary shelters with no access to water, he said.

That hasn’t been received well by activists and observers who fear that the regime could hamper timely aid to thousands of quake victims in rebel-held areas, most of whom are women and children, according to the UN.

International aid has been slow to arrive in rebel-held parts of Syria because of years of warfare and an existing humanitarian crisis that has made it harder for survivors to get food, shelter and medicine.

“We are exploring all avenues to reach people in need and conducting assessments on feasibility,” Madevi Sun-Suon, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told CNN on Tuesday. “We do have aid but this road issue is a big challenge as of now.”

The Syrian regime has also used the opportunity to call for sanctions against it to be lifted. According to the UN envoy, planes wouldn’t come to land at the Syrian airports due to American and European sanctions. Even countries who want to send humanitarian assistance cannot use the airplane cargo because of the sanctions.

In November, a UN-appointed human rights expert called for the immediate lifting of unilateral sanctions against Syria, saying they are exacerbating the destruction and trauma suffered by ordinary citizens there.

It would be quite ironic to try to reach out to a government that brutalized its people over the past dozen years, and who is responsible for a lot of the suffering they have gone through, according to a State Department spokesman.

“It’s a very convenient time for the regime to be making that argument because if sanctions were dropped, the ramifications of the much broader geopolitical situation would be game changing,” said Lister.

Turkey has not joined NATO, but does so according to the Swedish Prime Minister. Two years after the Arab boycott of Qatar, the crown prince and the emir of Bahrain has spoken to each other

Why it matters: The announcement comes less than 10 days after a drone attack on a military plant in Iran’s central city of Isfahan that US media outlets attributed to Israel . IRNA said the new underground base was one of the country’s most important air force bases, built deep underground, housing fighters equipped with long-range cruise missiles.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday he was ready to restart stalled negotiations over Sweden’s application to join NATO as soon as Turkey was, Reuters reported.

After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, NATO membership applications were submitted by Sweden and Finn, but Turkey has yet to give its approval, despite the fact that most of the other member states have done so. Turkey said last week that it does not support Sweden even though the Nordic neighbors are trying to join at the same time.

Why it matters: The three nations last year reached an agreement on a way forward, but Ankara suspended talks last month as tensions rose following protests in Stockholm, where a far-right politician burned a copy of the Quran. Turkey goes to elections in May.

Why it matters: The move comes amid an apparent thaw in relations. Two years after the Arab boycott ended, a phone call was made by the crown prince ofBAHRAIN to his counterpart in DOHA. After the summit in Abu Dhabi, the emir and king of France talked to each other.

Background: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt ended a three-year political and economic boycott of Qatar in January 2021. But since then there have been no bilateral discussions between Doha and Manama to resolve remaining differences. Travel and trade links between the countries were restored by all but one of them.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/middleeast/syria-left-behind-earthquake-mime-intl/index.html

The Twitter suspension of AlMosahf: censorship, disrespect of the Holy Quran and the UN OCHA-Syria

AlMosahf (The Quran), an account that tweeted snippets from the Islamic holy book, had more than 13 million followers before Twitter took action against it.

One user addressed Musk, saying: “I don’t think it violated the Twitter rules because its tweets are quoted from the Holy Quran. We demand the lifting of the suspension of this account.”

Not all users were upset with the suspension. Some decried the account’s use of incomplete Quranic verses that they said are taken out of context and thus change the meaning of the text.

The account owner’s sister accounts are run in English, French and German, and they post translations of Quranic verse. One sister account that shows Quranic videos is campaigning to have the original account unblocked.

Conditions for the 10.9 million people affected by the disaster in Syria are being further hit as fresh snowfall worsened the situation further for people across five governorates, according to the UN.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) said Thursday’s convoy, made up of six trucks carrying shelter items and Non Food Items (NFI), crossed through the Bab Al Hawa crossing – the only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria.

The administration that controls the only access point between the two countries reported 300 bodies after no aid arrived for three days.

Immediately after the quake, the United Nations said roads to the crossing were blocked, but as of Wednesday they were clear, raising questions as to why it was taking so long for help to arrive.

The humanitarian crisis in Idleb, Syria: The United Nations and the Emergency Medical Assistance for the Nearby Cygnus City, Syria

Abu Muhammad Sakhour, a former merchant, is volunteering as a nurse in the rebel-held city of Idlib, dressing wounds for quake victims and checking up on the injured who have been discharged from crowded hospitals.

At the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, protesters hold signs asking why only bodies are being allowed through. The bodies belong to Syrian refugees who sought safety in Turkey and are now being sent back to be buried on home soil.

More than 8,500 injured people need to be accommodated in 66 functional hospitals with 1,245 beds for short hospital stays according to the WHO. Moreover, all of northwest Syria has just 86 orthopaedic surgeons, 64 X-ray machines, 7 computerized tomography (CT) scanners and one magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine across the region, according to WHO-compiled data published towards the end of 2022. Gynaecologist Ikram Haboush, director of Idleb city’s sole public maternity-hospital, says “the medical situation in northwest Syria is catastrophic”.

Local authorities say 11,000 families in the rebel-held part of Syria are now homeless after the quake. Up to 2,000 deaths have been reported and thousands more injured, according to the United Nations.

Time and again Russia has used its veto at the Security Council to shut border crossings, reducing the routes for delivery of cross-border aid via Turkey to a single entry. Opening additional crossings on a temporary basis is not enough — more cross-border routes were already sorely needed.

Russia and China have been able to use their power to reduce the number of crossing from four to one. In January, less than one month before the quake, the UNSC unanimously voted to keep it open, a vote reluctantly backed by China and Russia, whose ambassador said it enabled aid to flow to a Syrian enclave “inundated with terrorists.”

We don’t need the politics. We don’t need a game going on. Barnes said that the international community should focus on keeping the border crossing open. Now that we’ve found enough people, we’re heading into the humanitarian phase. We need to provide people with basic shelter, food, and water.”

The number of Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance was 15.3 million before the earthquake, according to the UN Resident Commissioner for Syria, El- Mostafa Benlamlih.

An aid worker distributing supplies across cities in northern Syria told CNN on Thursday that homeless people have been sleeping in their cars amid a “very, very difficult,” situation.

When disasters come to an end, so does humanity. Aid for Syria’s Deir Ezzor 24, a research organization that distributes news from Syria

“He is using the disaster as a ticket to remove sanctions,” said Omar Abu Layla, executive director of Deir Ezzor 24, a research organization that delivers news from Syria’s Deir al-Zour province. “If we want to bring aid to Syria, we can. Time is critical. We’re playing with our lives and deaths.

“And now the humanitarian phase, the urgency of providing shelter, psychosocial care, food, schooling, and a sense of the future for these people, that’s our obligation now,” he said.

Syrians do not know where their next meal comes from. When we say meal, it’s not about vegetables, not about meat… Moutz Adham is the country director for Syria for charity, and he said it was about simple bread.

International teams take 24 to 48 hours to arrive, making this even more important. There are usually not enough local search andrescue teams on the ground to respond to collapsed buildings.

Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was already in a state of decline because of inflation.

“Allahu akbar”: A boy pulled from the rubble after a decade-long civil war in rebel-held northwestern Syria

The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is Great. In rebel-held northwestern Syria, volunteer and civil defense groups pulled a boy out of the rubble after an earthquake.

The world knows of these rescues because of Karam Kellieh, a resident and photojournalist who lives in the opposition-controlled territory. The area is home to some 4 million people displaced by the decade-long Syrian civil war. The area was devastated by bombs and poverty before the earthquake. Aid was often hampered by politics and the Syrian government.

He said that humanitarian aid and international aid haven’t appeared in 72 hours and that the little help is coming from individual groups.

Civil defense groups and civilians are trying to help in the rescue effort. “Everyone’s waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what’s happened, this catastrophe.”

The hope of finding survivors is no longer there. As we pull more dead bodies from the rubble, my heart breaks for every soul that could have been saved and was needlessly lost because we did not get the help we needed in time.

The situation in north-west Syria is so bad that the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has only five percent of reported sites covered by search and rescue.

Disaster Relief in Turkey: Helping Emrihan Korkmaz in the Post-Earthquake Relief Era During 1999 Ebolboldim Turkey

National funds meant for natural disasters were instead spent on highway construction projects that were managed by associates of the government, according to Ozel.

After a catastrophic earthquake in northwestern Turkey killed more than 18,000 people in 1999, authorities imposed an earthquake tax meant to corral billions of dollars’ worth of disaster prevention and relief.

Erdogan’s centralization of Turkey’s government has meant a plethora of restrictions on how individual cities and aid organizations can operate in the country, hampering overall rescue efforts. (Turkey’s embassies, meanwhile, along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations, are collecting donations internationally.)

Ozel says that the upcoming election in Turkey will weaken the leader of the party. “I am pretty sure that the government is one of the victims under the rubble of this earthquake,” Ozel predicts.

An 18-year-old high school student, Emrihan Korkmaz, has been working on the aid effort for three days. Korkmaz is from Turkey, so he can help out in the aftermath of the earthquake.

We’ve managed to load 18 semitrucks, and send them to the earthquake zone. They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is a more urgent need for food,” he says, as he loads a box underneath a banner with the image of Erdogan hanging from the ceiling. “However we can get it to them, it doesn’t matter. People there need food.”

Many people in the large region lack a shelter due to the temperatures being below freezing. The Turkish government has given millions of hot meals as well as tents and blankets, but it is hard to reach many people who are in need.

The evacuation of Gaziantep, Hatay, Syria, during the quake-broadcasting of July 2005 by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad criticized Western countries in his first televised comments since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck parts of the country five days ago, Syrian state media showed.

President Bashar Assad and his wife have visited injured quake victims in a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia, a base of support for the Syrian leader.

The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by the war between opposition forces and Assad’s government. The Syrian Foreign Minister says that any aid needs to be delivered in Damascus.

He explained that in Gaziantep they have no food, no money, no credit cards, no form of identification and no way of making a plan. He went to the gas station to see if they would give him something to eat or drink, in order to see if they would give him something to eat. He returned with an empty cup.

Since he is still an active member of the Turkish military, he asks that he be identified with his first name only.

Many hundreds of people from villages surrounding the cities of Gaziantep and Hatay are in these camps. Entire streets and neighborhoods in the small satellite districts of the villages have collapsed into rubble.

A rescue worker named Ozgur says that his team no longer expects to find anyone alive under the rubble. He works in construction for a large holding company and asks to only be identified by his first name for fear of reprisal for providing assistance without direct government approval.

“There are 30 to 40 people under there,” he says, pointing to a collapsed six-story building in front of him. “But none of them are going to come out alive.”

A Syrian refugee’s activist complains that the municipal stadium is not adequately equipped to accommodate all residents in Gaziantep — a frustration of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party

opposition politicians and members of the public have strongly condemned the organization’s response to the situation.

Faris claims that there are not enough facilities in the municipal stadium to allow for his family to use the bathroom.

He and his mother, three of his sisters and brother-in-law are covered with injuries from the falling rubble, and all have deep purple circles under their eyes. Their feet and hands were cut off when they had to find a way through the rubble in the cold, and their hands are covered in deep gashes from how they were dug out of their collapsed home.

They were told by police in Antakya that they had to evacuate, and that they could find shelter and food in Gaziantep. Now, Faris says he regrets the decision to come.

There, several Kurdish migrant families have set up the tents they usually use during the planting season. Genco Demir, who organized his community’s move to this field, says he and other farmers have been abandoned by the government. They say no one has come to inspect or repair the homes in their neighborhood of Sekiz Subat, even though it was damaged by the earthquake.

Hayat Gezer, a 45-year-old woman with a traditional Kurdish tattoo on her chin and a black headscarf, says the group is grappling with the additional stress of legal problems. She says that many people in their community have been imprisoned for crimes.

Southeastern Turkey is a heavily Kurdish region, and the Turkish government has been involved in a four-decade-long conflict there with the armed separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). This has led to persecution of many Kurds for alleged links to the group.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1155955553/turkey-earthquake-gaziantep-displaced-people

The destruction of a town in Syria’s AFAD: Mohammed Juma and his two children in the bunks in Sawran

The desperation in this camp is clear. A man tried to take bread from his neighbor’s tent, but ended up fighting. Demir has to hold the young man back.

Hunger and cold have helped make those in the AFAD camp highly critical of the Turkish government. Faris says he voted previously for Erdogan, who is up for reelection this year, but the soldier vows he never will again.

Mohammed Juma survived the collapse of his family, but he still doesn’t sleep. In the freezing nights, the 20-year-old and others in this town — still dazed and in shock — burn possessions found in the debris for heat.

The residents of the town of Jinderis heard the sounds of those trapped under the rubble but, without machinery and equipment, were powerless to save them.

Mohammed Juma said his wife, Alia, and his two children — 20-month old Ali and 6-month old Hussein — were alive after their home collapsed on top of them. Juma and his neighbors tried to pull at the shattered concrete for hours, but the effort was futile.

The Syrian civil defense teams only have a few excavators to recover the dead. At least 850 bodies were recovered on Friday morning from the rubble of Jinderis. Zakaria Tabakh remembered taking his 2-year-old son to sleep in his bed where he was killed by the falling debris. Tabakh’s wife died in the bed next to him. He said that few friends were able to come to the burial because they were too busy burying their own loved ones.

After years of war, they’ve been left with nothing. Tens of thousands now live with almost no access to basic services in makeshift tents set up in the olive groves where the mud clogs and weighs down the legs of children playing outside.

Less than one hour’s drive from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran now has no running water. On one side of the main street is the destroyed home of the Turki family, where nine people, including five children died. There was a family of seven that were killed. Neighbors said they had 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 rescue of the Narli family is being broadcasted on Turkish television after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Monday. First, Nehir was saved, followed by both of her parents.

The rescue of a family of five from a mounds of debris in the town of Nurdagi was reported by TV network HaberTurk. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is Great!” The last person in the family to be lifted to safety was the father.

“God is good!” cried a woman inside a collapsed building in the state of Antakya, Iraq, following a quake on Monday

“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say that almost no stone was left standing,” he said earlier Saturday from Diyarbakir.

Melisa Ulku, a woman in her 20s, was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan in the 132th hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. A thermal blanket covered her on the stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted “God is great!”

Just an hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay.

The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.

Not everything ended well. Rescuers reached a thirteen year old girl inside the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province at dawn Saturday andtubated her. She died before medical teams could free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

An Indian Army’s medical assistance team started treating the injured in a temporary field hospital in Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished, after aid continued to arrive.

Wincing in pain, he said he had been rescued from his collapsed apartment building in the nearby city of Antakya within hours of the quake on Monday. He was released without getting proper treatment for his injuries after receiving basic first aid.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said a Turkish man who died on the street outskirts of Antakya

I buried everyone that I lost, then I came here. He talked about his dead relatives, saying “My daughter is dead, my brother is dead, my sister is dead, my aunt and daughter are dead, and the wife of my son is pregnant.”

A large makeshift graveyard was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. The northeastern edge of the city was excavated as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived. Soldiers told motorists to not take photos on the busy road.

A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who did not wish to be identified because of orders not to give information to the media said that around 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery on the first day. By midday on Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.

The White Helmets, who announced the end of their search and rescue operations on Friday, told CNN on Saturday that the total number of dead was expected to rise much higher.

German rescue operations in Turkey that was halted on Saturday due to security concerns are still suspended for these reasons according to the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief.

Israeli search-and-rescue group United Hatzalah also announced Sunday that it was leaving Turkey after six days on the ground due to a “significant security threat.”

United Hatzalah chief executive Eli Pollack and vice president of operations Dov Maisel said in a statement they had “received intelligence of a concrete and immediate threat on the Israeli delegation and we have to put the security of our personnel first.”

We took the necessary steps in order to mitigate the threat for the sake of our lifesaving mission, as we knew there was a certain level of risk in sending our team to this area of Turkey.

The Austrian Forces Disaster Relief Unit (AFDRU) said a rescue dog handler was again helping Turkish rescue workers, with Turkish forces providing security in the search areas.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday that it was the first group to send a team to provide mental health support to earthquake victims in Syrian shelters.

A Syrian refugee boy’s voice is breaking his heart: Helping the victims of the 2011 Antakya earthquakes to find their feet

Omar Abu Lebda described visiting Antakya and meeting a 13-year-old boy who’d survived three days under the rubble. He’d suffered a leg injury and was now living in a car with his younger sister and father. Another sister and his mother had died in the earthquakes.

The voice messages he’s received chronicling their pain make it impossible to sleep, he says. Haunted by their cries, he lies awake tormented by guilt. He worries that each moment he rests, thousands back home in Syria are still buried alive under rubble.

“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. “When it happened, I was receiving constant voice messages, jumping from number to number on WhatsApp, each one is someone crying, telling me they are seeing people dying around them. I can not stop listening to them.

The nonprofit strives to empower Syrian refugee youth and families nationally and internationally by access to innovative education, community-driven aid and skill development, which has raised more than $49,000 for earthquake relief.

Meanwhile, on the ground, his colleagues who survived have been in a race against time, using the funds raised by workers like Al-Dahhan to help rescue those still trapped under the rubble and deliver relief to shell-shocked survivors.

The exhaustion in Al-Dahhan’s voice can be seen due to the lack of proper eating and sleeping since the earthquake.

“At least I get a little bit of relief, knowing what I’m doing matters, because the more I can fundraise here, the more it helps out there,” he said. I need to keep going because I am in constant stress that I am not doing enough. When I sleep, I feel guilty. I need to be awake. I need to be working. I would like to be updated more. I feel like I’m operating here, but my mind and soul are there.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/us/syrian-american-earthquake-raise-money-rescue-relief/index.html

What Do We Need to Do in Syria? A Syrian Case Study in the U.S., Where Do We Stand? How Do We Embarrass Syrian Mental Health?

Another story is about a family that lost two sisters in the earthquake, leaving their children orphaned. When their brother learned of his sisters’ deaths, Al-Dahhan says, he suffered a heart attack from the shock and died – also leaving his children fatherless.

“My mind started racing and I immediately thought it was an Israeli airstrike, since we have had a few of those in Latakia over the past few years,” Alsamman, 27, told CNN. I thought the earthquake was an airstrike when I saw the reports.

He spent the next hours in agony, watching images of death and destruction on his phone with no way of knowing if his friends or family were alive.

“It felt like no one was there for them, no aid was coming through, the only organizations able to provide aid were the ones already there,” Al-Dahhan said.

As the clock ticked, the opportunity to rescue survivors decreased, igniting panicked efforts from Syrians in the US like Alsamman and Al-Dahhan to raise as much money as possible for organizations on the ground.

Following the conflict in Syria that began in 2011), Nour Al Ghraowi moved to New York City, where she worked for the Karam Foundation.

While the world has been relatively quiet, there are organizations and people who are still fighting for them, who never stopped fighting for them.

After the 2011 Arab Spring, Syria’s government used military force against all opposition. Many of the 4.7 million people in northwest Syria are internally displaced because of the bombing attacks from the government of Assad in Russia.

Zahra emphasized the need for donations to provide immediate needs, including food, shelter, non-food items, and medicine, but said it was important to provide mental-health care for Syrians.

One of the biggest issues contributing to these mental health issues experienced by Syrians in the country and in the US, she says, is the feeling of being abandoned and forgotten.

“It’s only natural to have that reinforcement of asking themselves, ‘Do I matter as much or will I be forgotten again?’” she added. Will I be another undignified picture that is circulating but not humanized?

Syrian people can’t heal their wounds without letting them bleed or cry, or how they feel about the aftermath of a devastating earthquake

Many, including Al-Dahhan, have experienced psychological shocks, including pictures and videos of buildings falling during an earthquake and scenes similar to airstrikes that have killed and displaced thousands during the war.

“I built walls up years ago, because the war that happened really messed me up. Al-Dahhan did not want to get hurt like that again. Those walls crumbling is what I feel with this earthquake. I can not think of anything else because I am remembering things I don’t want to remember.

Others, like Zahra and Alsamman, say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt, possessed with a relentless, sinking feeling that no matter how much they help it won’t be enough.

“I can certainly say, without a doubt, as Syrians, we don’t have time to almost mourn or process our grief because we’re trying to use energy, time, resources, all hours of the day, to keep Syria in the news, keep Syria in conversation,” Zahra said.

“We don’t have time to heal those wounds, we are literally shouting from the rooftops, please don’t get distracted, please share, please donate, please help.”

The search for survivors in the rubble: A memorial to Raed Al Saleh, the head of The White Helmets, in Syria

The hope of finding survivors fading after a building falls, workers searched across the street for bodies in the rubble. Ms. Omac, 38, said she had relatives under the debris: a niece and nephew of her husband. She was waiting for someone to pull someone out alive or dead.

One family, numbering about a dozen, built a shelter of cardboard and tarp over a truck, with blankets and thin mattresses in the beds.

The Turkish Red Crescent, a humanitarian group, said it was speeding up the production of tents to house people after Turkish news media reported a shortage of temporary housing and poor sanitary conditions for the homeless.

The rescue phase of the response is coming to a close according to the UN aid chief.

Editor’s Note: Raed Al Saleh is head of The White Helmets, a group of nearly 3,000 volunteers working to save lives and strengthen communities in Syria. His views are not reflected in this commentary. There is more opinion on CNN.

We are the only organization here with the equipment and training to undertake heavy search and rescue. The volunteers have been doing something monumental, and I am impressed by their dedication.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain alive after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake: Syrian Civil Defense, United Nations, and the United Nations

Griffiths told Sky News over the weekend that the UN was asking the Security Council to authorize aid access through two additional border crossings, a misguided approach that wasted precious time. Legal analysts and scholars have argued against it, and humanitarian organizations say the need is too high for aid entry to be politicized.

The United Nations needs to do better. Children die under rubble if something isn’t done to protect and save human lives during an emergency.

It was local affected communities that lent their cars and heavy vehicles to the response, helping to dig, and donating fuel to keep themselves warm as we searched the rubble of thousands of buildings.

There are still survivors in southern Turkey after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake a week ago, even as rescue teams hear voices from under the rubble.

The live images were broadcast on CNN and showed rescuers working to save three sisters who were believed to be buried under the debris.

In the same region, rescuers pulled an 18-year-old boy and a man alive from the rubble on Tuesday – a day after they saved a 10-year-old girl believed to have been buried for around 185 hours.

Eight days after the tremor and its violent aftershocks, more than 36,000 people have been confirmed dead and survival stories are becoming few and far between.

After announcing an end to their search and rescue operation last week, the “White Helmets” group, officially known as Syria Civil Defense, on Monday declared a seven-day mourning period in rebel-controlled areas in the north of the country.

On Monday, the UN said it welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to open two more border crossings between Turkey and Syria to allow aid into the north of the country.

Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay denied there was any food or aid shortages. There were no problems with feeding the public and millions of blankets were going to everyone, he said on television.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said more than 9,200 foreign personnel are taking part in the country’s search and rescue operations, while 100 countries have offered help so far.

“The people who are going to have the most effect on the rescue is going to be your neighbors. Because they’re the ones right there, right when it happens,” Forrest Lanning told NPR. He is a seismologist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as a structural engineer.

Spreading that awareness, and training people to respond when official rescuers aren’t able to do so, are among the measures emergency response experts say are essential to saving the most lives in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

The window of opportunity to save people trapped under collapsed buildings “will start to close pretty fast and by the time you get around day four or five, it’s done,” Lanning said.

Natalie Simpson, the professor and chair of operations management and strategy at the University at Buffalo School of Management said that even if someone can’t get to someone in the rubble, they can still find out where people are.

When it comes to removing debris, it takes a long time, and it’s difficult to get to people. There’s thousands and thousands of buildings in Turkey, he said.

The Community Emergency Response Team: Creating Infrastructure for Emergency Response in Turkey, Syria, and its Influence on the Middle East Initiative’s earthquake-ravaged landscape

The Community Emergency Response Team was developed to be able to respond quickly to local needs. FEMA trains volunteers in all 50 states in disaster response skills.

It teaches people what to do after a major earthquake, where to get water after an emergency, how to check on immobile neighbors, and how to search collapsed buildings, Lanning said.

There are factors, like types of injuries and how many search and rescue teams are on the scene, that contribute to how likely a trapped person is to survive. He said that a trapped individual can last up to a week under a collapsed building.

Simpson with the University at Buffalo said she wishes each time disaster strikes there would be an immediate mobilization of rescue crews and military. That’s not always the case, and it wasn’t in Turkey and Syria, she said.

“The single, biggest failure point in emergency response is failure to pick up on the fact that this is an emergency,” Simpson said. There is an instinct to get more information.

She said you aren’t in Kansas anymore with emergencies including the aftermath of an earthquake. One of the traps we fall into is asking, ‘Oh God, what’s the best thing to do at this moment?’, when they’re not normal. It’s all good. Let’s get moving.”

In Turkey and many other areas, the military can operate in a disaster ravaged landscape and open new airstrips to aid in quickly.

The analysis by the Middle East Institute says that the Turkish government didn’t immediately mobilize it’s military to help in direct rescue efforts or set up field hospitals.

“There’s a very important lesson here: It’s never too early to activate your large-scale response when you’re not getting any information out of a region,” she said. “I think that that will make an impression on decision-makers elsewhere, that will actually help people in the future.”

Lanning said this latest disaster hammers home how important it is for global communities in earthquake-prone areas to strengthen infrastructure to withstand a disaster like the one in Turkey and Syria.

There is a lot of the damage due to the construction of mostly concrete buildings, said Lanning, who has been working in earthquake-prone areas for 15 years.

This is despite the knowledge that concrete buildings are not the best at withstanding earthquakes. They are very easy to construct and can easily hide imperfections, he said.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1156636019/the-earthquake-in-turkey-and-syria-offers-lessons-and-reminders-for-disaster-res

An emotional exchange between the rescuer and his friend Mustafa Avci in the wake of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake

Much of the work to analyze this latest disaster and what went wrong or right will come in the following months and years. It’s incredibly valuable work, Lanning said.

How is my family? The man is talking into a phone while on the stretcher. Crying in disbelief, his friend replies: “Everyone is well… they are all waiting for you… I am coming to you.”

The rescue of Mustafa Avci, a 33 year old man, who was pulled from the rubble in Turkey’s southern Hatay province after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region, went through an emotional exchange.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video on Friday showing the phone call between Avci and his friend, reminding people that it is still possible to survive 11 days after the earthquake.

As the death toll across Turkey and Syria rose, the rescue of Avci late on Thursday night came.

Avci can be seen in the video wearing a neck brace and asking whether or not everyone escaped. Let me hear their voices if for a moment.”

Koca, the minister, said both Avci and a second man, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, were rescued around the same time from under the ruins of a private hospital building.

Aydinli thought his rescue workers were hallucinating and he assumed the boy had died with his eyes open. The child cried out, while his brother stood by. I have no feeling of my legs. I need to be saved!

Aydinli said they get teary eyed from time to time because of the boy’s rescue. He is well and conscious, and he is quite well. Hopefully, he will get better.

Emergency medical assistance for displaced earthquake-damaged areas in Hatay province, Turkey, said on Friday afternoon a survivor had been trapped under the rubble of a building

Though donations are pouring in from all over the world, many survivors have been left homeless due to lack of access to basic necessities.

“A lot of lives have been saved, a lot of people have been pulled from rubble by their neighbors, by their friends, by their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. Frontline health workers have done amazing work in both countries,” the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergencies director, Mike Ryan, told a briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.

Rescuers on Friday removed a survivor from the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne, in hard-hit Hatay province, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Hakan Yasubolu spent nearly 300 hours under the rubble. He was taken on a stretcher to an ambulance.

A woman who had been trapped in the rubble of a building in Kahramanmaras for 258 hours was removed on Thursday, according to a news agency.

Meanwhile, The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

“In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security,” the Rome-based agency said in a statement.

The decision allows holders of Turkish temporary protection cards residing in earthquake-damaged areas to cross into Syria without having to obtain a travel permit from Turkish authorities. Normally, Turkey would consider Syrians holding protected status who crossed into Syria without a permit to have relinquished their status as asylum-seekers. They were banned from entering Turkey for five years if they didn’t give up their protection cards.

Spain says it will take in some 100 Syrian refugees in Turkey that have suffered in the earthquake. The Minister said the refugees would be the most vulnerable and affected by the earthquake.

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said the state was caring for 1,589 children who were separated from their families in the earthquake, including 247 who have not yet been identified.

UNICEF, Disaster, and Disaster: A Humanitarian Relief Leader in Syria and an Empathetic Video of a Syrian Abu Lebda

According to a person who works for the UN, Syria has lost the attention of the world as it has many other crises. She was speaking at the World Government Summit in the United States of America.

Donor support is critical for UNICEF to continue its work of reuniting unaccompanied children with relatives, Mardini says, and distributing sanitation services and safe drinking water to people to avert the spread of diseases in quake-stricken areas.

The most important thing is to help people who need it so they can get through the winter and then get back on their feet after that. We’ll stay with it until we get the job done.

Aid groups are trying to marshal the current outpouring of support into greater pledges of aid for Syrians while attention is still on the earthquakes, but the road to recovery will be long and uncertain.

According to the World Health Organization, the government of Syria has made 200,000 people homeless in government-controlled parts of the city.

Martin was the U.N.’s Humanitarian Relief leader and he went to areas that were affected by the earthquakes.

A Syrian living in Turkey has millions of followers on social media and shared a video of his emotional trauma with Syrians.

Abu Lebda also described seeing a Syrian man abruptly getting off a bus after insisting he’d heard his two children calling for him from under the rubble of his home.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Istanbul and Turkey: “It’s gonna be hard to recover” after the Feb. 6 earthquake

The U.N.’s refugee agency closed last year because it didn’t have enough funds to fulfill its needs. The agency that helps Syrian refugees says it has received 15% of its global funding requirements but it hasn’t figured out how the earthquakes will affect it.

ISTANBUL — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a helicopter tour Sunday of one of the provinces worst-affected by the Feb. 6 earthquake in southern Turkey and northern Syria and pledged a further $100 million in aid to help the region.

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Tony Blinken said at the Incirlik Air Base, the US-Turkish facility that has coordinated the distribution of disaster aid. “Unfortunately, the search and rescue is coming to an end.” There will be a huge rebuilding operation after the recovery is over.

Blinken is set to fly to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, later Sunday for discussions with Turkish officials on Monday, including an anticipated meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As well as the effects of the earthquake, Blinken is expected to discuss Sweden and Finland’s efforts to join NATO, which Turkey has delayed.

He flew over the Hatay province with the Turkish Foreign Minister. He was expected to meet with U.S. and Turkish service personnel, as well as Turkish military families affected by the earthquake.

“When you see the extent of the damage, the number of buildings, the number of apartments, the number of homes that have been destroyed, it’s going to take a massive effort to rebuild,” the top U.S. diplomat said after the helicopter tour.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/19/1158223049/blinken-turkey-earthquake-pledges-100-million-us-aid

The Epicenter of Kahramanmara and Hatay: Efforts on Search and Rescue for the Earthquake after the U.S. Geological Survey

Incirlik, home to the U.S. Air Force’s 39th Air Base Wing, has been a crucial logistics center for aid distribution. Supplies from around the world have been flown into the base and sent by truck and helicopter to those in need, including in difficult to reach villages.

Turkish Interior Minister Sleyman Soylu said Monday that the epicenter was in the Defne district.

The White Helmets said they are working to take the injured to hospitals, inspect the affected villages and towns, and remove rubble to open the roads for the ambulances.

The United States Geological Survey initially reported a magnitude 6.4 earthquake at a depth of 10 kilometers, but later lowered that to a magnitude 6.3.

Officials have been urging the public to stay away from buildings. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay asked the public not to enter the damaged buildings, especially to take their belongings.

Zahir told us that he went back to the house in order to get some rest after the shock happened again.

Turkey’s Disaster Management authority announced on Sunday that it had stopped search and rescue operations, as experts say the chances of surviving in the rubble after the earthquake are very unlikely.

Efforts still remain in the provinces of Kahramanmara and Hatay. A couple and their child were rescued from a building in Hatay after the earthquake.

Emergency Medical Services in the Idleb Region: The First Earthquake and the Struggle to Publish an X-ray, CT and MRI Report on Northwest Syria

With only 64 X-ray and 73 kidney dialysis machines, 7 CT scanners and one MRI, doctors in northwest Syria are racing against the clock to treat 8,500 injuries.

The United Nations and aid agencies are struggling to get supplies and expertise to earthquake-affected areas, because there are only three temporary crossing points along the 911-kilometre border with Turkey.

Hospitals in this region have been overwhelmed as they attempt to accommodate thousands of injured people in spaces with severely limited beds, medical supplies, surgical equipment and intensive-care facilities.

Doctors need more equipment and painkillers, along with antibiotics. “These supplies were not abundant before the earthquake,” and will now run out, says Haboush.

The people are making use of any existing resources, including basic ambulances, Ekzayez says. “The medical staff have been working non-stop,” adds Haboush, who was working at the maternity hospital in Idleb when the first earthquake hit at 01:17 universal time. The hospital occupies the fifth and sixth floors of a building. “We had to evacuate the incubators and move all the babies to the ground floor,” Haboush recalls.

According to three doctors who Nature spoke to in northwest Syria, the most common injuries are limb fractures, trauma injuries, crush injuries including ‘crush syndrome’ (damages that result in organ dysfunction including kidney failure) and bleeding.

People with crush syndrome need intensive care and dialysis, says cardiologist Jawad Abu Hatab, who is dean of medicine at Free Aleppo University in northwest Syria. However, the region has only 73 renal dialysis machines, according to the WHO-compiled data.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00547-7

Syrian Engineers Association (ASA): Assessing the structural and medical status of buildings in the wake of the Syrian Civil Liberation Law (Convention 7/17/2003)

Engineers are trying to figure out if buildings are safe with minor cracks, if they need to be repaired or if they’re unsafe in which case they have to evacuate immediately.

Muhammad Azmie Tawackol was the president of the association and he says that the structural status of buildings should be assessed as urgent as the medical situation. There are many methods available for people in northwest Syria.

Experts from the Syrian diaspora are providing virtual assessments in places that aren’t accessible to local engineers. Residents of damaged buildings are sending pictures and videos of their interiors to the Syrian Engineers Association, who are based in Doha.

Regardless of whether the materials they are using are suitable, buildings in danger of collapsing are being reinforced. Carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers would work better for seismic reinforcement, Mohammad Khear Hayek, an engineer with the volunteers association, told Nature. They have to use brittle industrial iron. Hayek says that they must respond quickly because of the emergency situation.

Ali Hallak, a computer engineer with the engineers association based in northwest Syria said that the association is collecting data daily and that the next step will be to analyse the reports and produce statistical studies.

There are projects looking into the situation. One is the UK-funded Research for Health Systems Strengthening in Syria, which is investigating how health care is being affected by war, and determining what more-sustainable models of governance and financing could look like, says co-investigator Abdulkarim Ekzayez, an epidemiologist at King’s College London.

Researchers can ask the WHO to prioritize health needs in the region. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the agency’s director-general, can use that status to urge power broker on the ground to allow it to work with other experts and deliver both immediate and long term help.

This tragedy has opened a rare window to provide more international support for people who have been neglected for much too long. Researchers can help open that window.