• Last minute Turkey - Syria earthquake: Live

  • Middle East Why have 6,000 buildings not withstood the earthquake in Turkey?

Four days after the earth split in two in Turkey, swallowing more than 17,500 lives -3,162 of them, in Syria-, the Bab Al Hawa crossing, on the border between the two countries, has opened for the first time.

It is the only gateway for humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas in northwestern Syria, the closest to the epicenter of the quake.

"

The situation in Syria is catastrophic

. There are entire cities, entire neighborhoods reduced to nothing, thousands of people have been left on the streets," explains Francisco Otero y Villar, general coordinator of Doctors Without Borders for operations in Syria, who describes a bleak panorama in a country that has been at war for 12 years.

"No rescue team has arrived here and people work with what little they have. They are digging with their bare hands in the rubble.

Raising pieces of cement. They are exhausted

, "explains Otero and Villar, regretting that they are losing time precious, the first hours or days after the earthquake, to find survivors under the ruins.

There is a

seven-day window

to rescue buried people.

It is a figure given these days by the UN Humanitarian Aid Office, an estimate that results from endless rescue operations around the world.

Fortunately, this Thursday a first United Nations aid convoy - made up of six trucks with hygiene products and tents - entered Syria today from Turkey, reports France Presse, citing an official at the Bab al Hawa border post.

However, that convoy had been planned since before the devastating tremor that shook Turkey on Monday.

For this reason, MSF, which operates in the areas controlled by the rebels in Syria, demands that this humanitarian crossing work at a greater capacity and allow vital, urgent aid to enter.

And that, in addition, new access points are enabled.

It is a race against time.

"We can hold out for a week or two"

The NGO had 'stocks' prepared in the country to be able to respond to an emergency.

However, this situation has blown up all forecasts.

"We can hold out for one or two weeks, no more. It is essential that they let in humanitarian aid. Medicines, surgical supplies, tents," explains Francisco.

because in addition to caring for the more than 3,500 injured who have already passed through the few facilities controlled by the NGO that are still standing, "we must support the population that has been left without homes."

"

People are in real panic. They have been living through 12 years of war

; after that, the Covid pandemic arrived; then, a cholera epidemic, and now this. The vulnerability is extreme. Everything is dismantled. There is a lack of medical personnel but it is that, for years, schools and universities have not worked, so these doctors do not recover. The little that remains standing is overwhelmed, "he continues.

The UN estimates that

90% of Syrians living in the country live in poverty

.

Those who have left form the largest displaced group in the world: 15 million people.

And then there is winter.

Freezing and freezing temperatures.

In Melkis, and other opposition areas in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, search operations continue only thanks to the neighbors and the rescuers of the White Helmets.

Hundreds of people are believed to remain trapped.

"We all have cold flu, it's very cold"

In the city of Aleppo, Almira (not her real name) has spent every night since the earthquake inside a vehicle.

"From time to time, someone says that another bigger (earthquake) is on the way and we don't know what to do beyond going to the church next door to our house (...) or, when it is very crowded, to another area where people park their cars in a row and everyone sits inside," he told the Efe news agency.

Two new aftershocks were felt yesterday.

"We haven't slept in two days and we all have cold flu, it's very cold," she lamented.

In Damascus-controlled areas of the country, where an estimated 300,000 people have been left homeless, MSF has not been able to establish itself.

The information that arrives from there does so little by little while the Syrian president,

Bashar Asad,

has remained absolutely silent since the earthquake.

There are no statements but there are new attacks.

As denounced by Syrian human rights organizations, only a few hours after the earthquake there was a bombardment in the city of Marea.

But the world seems to have forgotten Syria, the pain of a country that adds misfortunes.

That is the request of humanitarian aid organizations.

"The international community must immediately mobilize resources in northern Syria," the deputy director of Amnesty International for the Middle East, Aya Majzoub, requested two days ago.

"There was already an emergency situation in northwestern Syria. Communities there are fighting a cholera outbreak and are suffering from rain and snowfall. In this context, and with more than a decade of conflict,

this earthquake is impossible to bear

," Unicef ​​spokesman James Elder said in Geneva last Tuesday.

"There is a certain fatigue in the international community. But it is essential

to keep the focus on Syria.

A solution must be found, people live with enormous deprivations, in a deplorable situation. They live without any perspective for the future. Not even peace," he explains, in conversation from Jordan, Francisco Otero y Villar, who tries to find hope, however minimal, in this gloomy panorama.

And then he remembers that yesterday, a group of volunteers pulled the body of a dead young Syrian mother out of a mountain of concrete.

Then they heard a scream, it was one of her children, badly injured.

When the boy was already getting into an ambulance, suddenly someone guessed: "Another brother."

And once the ambulance had started, he had to stop: "One more brother!"

Three survivors who will recover from their injuries and, perhaps, will make an effort to rescue the good memories of a life marked by absence.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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