Syria earthquake ‘made decade of war seem a drop in the ocean’

A decade of war now ‘seems a drop in the ocean’ for the wrecked towns left desperate for aid that simply doesn’t arrive.

Ibrahim Turki lost nine members of his family when their Sawran home collapsed. Picture: Richard Spencer for The Times

The towns of northern Syria thought they had seen enough destruction in the past decade: seized by rebels, barrel-bombed by the Assad regime, overrun by Islamic State, shelled by Kurds.

Then the ground opened up and now they wait for assistance, but there is none. Their families sleep in the open, under olive trees, which they cut up to burn to keep warm in the freezing nights. The dead lie crushed under their houses.

The border crossings from nearby Turkey, which should be packed with lorries bringing food and fuel, stand idle, blocked by Russian spite and United Nations incompetence.

The town of Sawran was first struck from the air in 2012. I was there a few hours later, looking into the crater left by a missile fired by a Syrian jet, as the bodies were brought out.

Those days now seem like child’s play, the mayor told me, compared with the moment this week the earth was split apart and the eerie sound of a grinding roar laced with cries filled the night air. The cries called out “Allahu Akbar”.

“Only God could expect this would happen, 11 years later, after the day of that bombing, and all that has happened since,” Mohammed Wajih said. “Yet all that bombing and shelling is a drop in the sea compared to our experience this week.”

Behind him as he spoke lay the ruins of two houses, the concrete shards white in the cold winter sunlight.

On one side, a family of seven had died. They had fled in 2018 from Khan Sheikhoun, neighbours said, the town which the regime hit with bombs and sarin gas the year before, killing 89 people. Standing by the ruins was a young man called Mohammed Jassem, 21, a refugee from Damascus, where his family home was bombed when he was a child. He had tried to dig them free, but it was hopeless, the neighbours said.

On the other side of the road, nine members of Ibrahim Turki’s family had died. Turki said he had woken to the swaying of his house, grabbed his wife and children, and dragged them clear just as it collapsed.

But his father and mother, his two sisters and their five children, Ali, 3, Siham and Ammar, 4, Silin, 5, and Saddam, 7, didn’t make it.

“We had a few seconds, and that was it,” he said.

The family had gathered the evening before to see his father off. He was due to travel on the day of the earthquake to Turkey for an operation for cancer of the throat. They had wondered if they would see him again.

Jindires has been badly hit. There are 5000 homeless families in the town. Picture: Bekir Kasim/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images/The Times

The 32 people killed in Sawran on Monday dwarfed the number of victims of any single strike during the war here – though not on nearby towns like Azaz, which as a base for rebel forces received a heavy pummelling from Assad’s forces.

That was war, Wajih said. The town knew what to expect when politics was involved – but they were unprepared for politics to overshadow their need for aid when the disaster was natural.

The town has received some tents from the Turkish authorities, whose flags fly all over this part of Syria. The rebel leadership of northern Syria is supported and funded by Ankara. But there are not nearly enough tents.

Sawran is a small settlement north of Aleppo, surrounded by olive plantations and fields of beans and lentils.

To the west is Jindires, the worst-hit town in all of Syria. By comparison with Sawran’s 236 wrecked and collapsed houses, there are 5000 homeless families in Jindires, and Turkey has so far provided only 1000 tents, the sole aid it has received.

Search and rescue efforts at collapsed buildings in Jindires. Picture: Bekir Kasim/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images/The Times

It has seen its own conflict, in which the Turkish-backed rebels drove out the Kurdish militia the YPG, the Syrian arm of the PKK guerrilla group. Since then, Arab families from elsewhere in Syria have arrived.

Again, the safety was illusory. Zachariah Tabah, 26, had put his two-year-old son Abdulhadi to bed, joined his wife, and fallen asleep. When he woke, they were dead, covered in debris. “That is all I remember,” he said.

His face still looked numb with the shock. “How I got myself clear and out of the building, that I do not know at all.”

Somehow, his older son, Abdulwahab, 5, also managed to escape.

Maybe it was the neighbours who helped. The bulk of the rescue work in rebel-controlled areas is being carried out by the White Helmets, a volunteer civilian defence force funded by western governments, including Britain, which is using diggers and bulldozers – some donated by construction firms.

They lack the technically sophisticated equipment such as concrete cutters and thermal imaging cameras that are routine in western countries, said Hassan Mohammed, a team leader in Jindires.

President Assad meeting an Algerian rescue team in Aleppo. The north of Syria has been bombed heavily by his regime. Picture: Syrian Presidency/Reuters/The Times

Enthusiastic amateurs had tried to lift concrete clear of survivors, only for the rubble to shift and crush them.

Some amateurs had greater success. Ahmed Jamal, 19, dug four metres down into what remained of the block of flats next to his house, hearing voices below. After three hours, he found a 14-year-old girl and pulled her free. Two hours later, he reached her brother and parents. There were other voices crying out for help, he said. But they were impossible to reach.

There is no logistical reason for aid not to arrive, only practical and political ones. The practical one is that the country best placed to help, Turkey, is grappling with an unimaginable crisis of its own.

Altogether, more than 22,000 people have been confirmed dead so far, 19,000 of them in Turkey, 2000 in rebel-held areas of Syria, and the remainder in regime areas.

The Turks are ready to allow through international aid convoys – but there aren’t any. The UN has sent just two; the second arriving on Friday – too late, even by the admission of UN envoy Geir Pedersen.

The main political difficulty is getting the UN to deliver aid to rebel-held areas. Russia, which has a veto on the UN Security Council, three years ago enforced a ban on the UN delivering any aid through the Bab al-Salama crossing, 16km from Sawran. It wants it delivered by its ally, Assad.

The only crossing left is at Bab al-Hawa, far to the west, controlled a jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Aid groups do use it, but with reluctance.

So far, 850 bodies have been removed from what remains of Jindires. At least 200 people have yet to be found.

Mohammed, the White Helmets team leader, said up to a third of those might have been saved with more prompt rescue. Their cries had gone on for days, before gradually fading away. On Thursday night, the last voice from Jindires’s concrete casements fell silent.

The Times