In a hospital in Syria, Osama Abdel Hamid holds back tears as he recalls the massive earthquake that collapsed his home on Monday, killing several neighbors and hundreds of other compatriots.
“We were sound asleep when we felt a great shock,” Abdel Hamid told AFP at Al-Rahma Hospital in the northwestern province of Idlib, where he was being treated for a head injury.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, whose epicenter was near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, devastated entire parts of cities in Turkey and also in war-torn Syria. Authorities estimate the combined death toll at more than 2,000, with a tendency to rise exponentially in the coming hours.
When his family home in the village of Azmarin, near the Syrian border with Turkey, began to shake, Abdel Hamid said he woke up “wife and children” and they all ran “for the exit door”. “We opened the door and suddenly the whole building collapsed,” he says.
Within moments, Abdel Hamid found himself under the rubble of the four-story building. All their neighbors died, but the family survived.
“The walls collapsed on us, but my son managed to escape,” said Abdel Hamid. “He started screaming and people gathered around him, knowing there were survivors, and pulled them out of the rubble.”
The family was taken to hospital in Darkush, a town several kilometers south along the Turkish border. The health unit had to deal with patients far beyond its capacity and counted at least 30 corpses.
An AFP photographer witnessed several ambulances arriving one after the other in Al-Rahma, carrying casualties, many of them children. “The situation is very bad,” said Majid Ibrahim, general surgeon at the hospital, where some 150 people injured in the earthquake arrived late this morning.
“Many people are still under the rubble of buildings,” he told AFP. “We urgently need help for the area, especially medical help.”
Lots of “stuck”
At least 810 people have been killed across Syria, according to the Syrian government and rescuers. The health ministry said at least 430 people were killed and 1,315 injured in government-controlled areas.
The White Helmets rescue group said at least 380 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in rebel-held areas. “The number could increase as many families are still trapped,” they warned.
In an overcrowded hospital room, the wounded lay in beds, some with bandages on their heads and others treated with fractures and bruises. In one of the beds, a boy with a bandage on his head was sleeping next to another patient. In another room, a young woman cried as she received an injection, her hand in a cast.
Mohammad Barakat, 24, was treated for a broken leg. “I took my kids and left the house,” the father-of-four recalls, lying in bed with sores covering parts of his face. “My house is old and the building is very old,” he told AFP.
“So I was afraid it would collapse on us. The walls of the neighboring houses started to collapse as we stood on the street.”
day of the apocalypse
Anas Habbash says he “went down the stairs like crazy” as he carried his son and led his pregnant wife out of the building in the northern city of Aleppo. “When we reached the street, we saw dozens of families in shock and fear,” the 37-year-old man told AFP.
Some knelt down to pray and others began to cry “as if it were the day of the apocalypse”.
“I haven’t had this feeling in all the war years we’ve been through” in Syria since 2011, Habbash said. “This was much harder than all the shells and bullets.”
The earthquake struck near Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey at 4:17 am (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers, the US Geological Survey said.
Tremors were also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus.
Source: DN
