The devastating earthquake in Syria and Turkey

Being Syrian means that if you escape from war, missiles, massacres, poverty and drowning... you will die in an earthquake.

There are no words to describe the feeling we are feeling, a mixture of fear, anger, sadness, pain and disappointment.
To be accustomed from the age of 10 to the sounds of shells, shots, and the smell of death, and to think that nothing will scare you more than an 11-year war, only to have an earthquake that shakes your heart and sends panic in you that you have never experienced before.
I was sleeping and I thought it was a normal day like the one before it, to wake up to the feeling of my bed shaking violently, I got up in panic to find the whole house shaking, the pillars of the house swaying and not as if they were made of iron and cement. I got up and went out of my room to look for my family, I found them awake and panic filled their faces, we embraced each other and hugged one of the pillars of the house, waiting for this nightmare to end.
During that I heard a loud sound, I did not know if it was the sound of a crack in the ground and it would swallow us up along with the house, or it was the sound of thunder because we were in a thunderstorm with heavy rain in the previous days, or it was the sound of nearby buildings falling to the ground.
It's an earthquake! It came to destroy what people were able to rebuild and restore after the war, it came to snatch life from the eyes of the remaining children, women and youth.

When I saw the news, they say it was a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Soon, a 7.7-magnitude aftershock followed, which made us leave the house and head towards the street, fearing that the roof might fall on our heads. People are all in the streets and you can only hear the sounds of screaming and crying, buildings have collapsed, people are under rubble and ambulances are filling the place, there is no longer room for the victims and the wounded in ambulances, trucks have begun to load bodies extracted from under the rubble, people are digging with their hands to extract their children and families. What makes it even more tragic is the low temperatures and the torrential rain that did not stop.
My brother told me that the hospital is on alert, all the medical staff in the emergency department receive the wounded and the victims, hundreds of deaths so far. Some say that the total number is about 1,800 people. My brother told me that he put 80 unidentified bodies in the freezers himself, and they have not been identified yet.
The sad thing is that Syria is a country that has not yet recovered from the effects of the war. Its population is now living in an economic war that suffocates it, so that the earthquake comes and destroys the last breath of life opportunities for a people who have suffered a lot. This people has great capabilities, but unfortunately there is no environment that embraces them. Syrians have become rejected in many countries. And they constitute a burden, I do not know the type of Syrians that you may have dealt with, but believe me, if they gave you a bad idea, they constitute only minorities. Have you seen the movie about the true story of the two swimmers? It's a simple example. Syrian doctors filled the shortage in the health systems of many countries, and only a few appreciate that.
Syria does not have the equipment and equipment necessary to deal with such natural disasters. Until now, many people are still under the rubble. We have to cut off the equipment and cranes. All that has been accomplished and presented so far is from volunteer youth teams. External financial donations to accounts inside Syria are not all guaranteed or most credible. The money does not reach its beneficiaries, and the people here know that, so they started collecting in-kind donations, such as clothes for people who went out in their pajamas in the cold and without shoes, also collecting donations of food, medicine and water. Young Syrian influencers who are not known for their simple abilities themselves collected these donations and took to the streets to distribute them with their own hands to those who deserve. Mosques, churches and schools opened their doors to the homeless as a result of the earthquake. The state does not have the capabilities, so volunteer teams are the ones that play the biggest role in removing the affected people from under the rubble and distributing clothes. Warm medicines and food for the survivors.
The destruction that afflicted Turkey and northern Syria is no less than the destruction that afflicted the coastal provinces. Foreign humanitarian aid went directly to Turkey and Idlib (the Syrian province is not affiliated with the government regime), but the provinces of Latakia, Aleppo, and Hama, which are affiliated with the regime, did not receive anything!! Once again, politics interferes with humanitarian issues. Aren't people in these provinces also human beings and they have rights? Aren't children under the rubble and no one is helping them? Air aid reached everyone except Syria, isn't it the weakest and least capable? Isn't it more appropriate to receive help! The second day since the earthquake, and people are still under the rubble, and the others are homeless, hungry, sick, and cold.
Let the sanctions be lifted on Syria in light of this humanitarian catastrophe, because no one pays for it except the poor people.

I will leave you some tragic pictures from the reality of the earthquake and some volunteer work carried out by activists on Instagram. All you see are screenshots. You can see more by searching on Google under the title "The devastating earthquake in Syria, Aleppo, Latakia and Hama."