A steady stream of wounded arrived at an overwhelmed hospital in the rebel-held northwestern Syrian city of Darkush on Monday, after the
deadly earthquake
that struck Turkey and battered the neighboring country, ravaged by a war that raged. It's been almost 12 years now.
Mothers comforted crying boys.
The quake struck Syria's last opposition stronghold, bordering Turkey, as well as areas further afield in the hands of the Damascus government, killing hundreds of people.
Amid the chaos of the hospital, Osama Abdul Hamid sat with a dazed expression, his face covered in wounds.
He had barely made it out alive with his wife and four children from their apartment in the nearby town of Azmarin.
Many of his neighbors were not so lucky.
“The building has four floors, and no one was able to get out of three of them
,” said Abdul Hamid, between sobs.
"God gave me a new chance at life," he grieved.
Injured by the earthquake, treated at a hospital in Bab al-Hawa, in the Syrian province of Idlib.
Photo: AFP
A powerful quake that woke residents before dawn caused further damage and suffering in Syria's last rebel enclave, already
ravaged by years of fighting and shelling
and home to millions of displaced Syrians who have fled their homes due to the civil war. .
Overflowing hospitals
Hospitals and clinics were inundated with the wounded.
In the enclave, in Idlib province, many of the displaced live in appalling conditions in makeshift camps.
Many others there and in neighboring government-controlled areas are staying in buildings damaged by earlier shelling and more vulnerable to earthquakes.
The quake caused full and partial damage to buildings in at least 58 villages, towns and cities in northwestern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
As of early Monday afternoon, 1,900 had already been confirmed dead - more than 1,100 in Turkey and close to 800 in Syria - and that number was expected to rise by the hour.
In opposition-controlled territory in Syria, more than 200 people have been reported dead, but
hundreds more are believed to be buried under the rubble
of their homes.
more suffering
“This disaster will worsen the suffering of Syrians already battling a serious humanitarian crisis,” Carsten Hansen, the Norwegian Refugee Council's Middle East director, said in a statement.
"Millions have already been forced to flee by the war in the wider region and now many more will be displaced by the disaster," he warned.
At Darkush hospital in western Idlib, Abdel Hamid recounted how
his family was sleeping in their apartment when they were awakened by a strong and prolonged tremor
.
They ran away.
But “before we got to the door of the building, the whole building came down on us,” he said.
A building destroyed by the earthquake, this Monday in the Syrian town of Armanaz, in the province of Idlib.
Source: EFE
A wooden door protected them from the worst force of the collapse: they all made it out alive.
He, his wife and three of the children suffered head injuries, but all are stable.
The northwestern province of Idlib is considered
the last opposition stronghold in Syria
and is dominated mainly by the Levant Liberation Agency, an Islamist alliance that includes the former Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda, formerly known as al Nusra Front.
In Idlib and northern parts of neighboring Aleppo, which are also beyond the control of the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, there are 4.6 million people, almost 3 million of them displaced by the armed conflict that began in 2011 in the Arab country. .
Source: AP and EFE
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