Asharq Al-Awsat in Quake-Stricken Jindires: Levelled Neighborhoods, Refugees under the Rubble

08 February 2023, Syria, Jindires: A general view of the destruction caused by the deadly earthquake that tore through the Turkish-Syrian border. (dpa)
08 February 2023, Syria, Jindires: A general view of the destruction caused by the deadly earthquake that tore through the Turkish-Syrian border. (dpa)
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Asharq Al-Awsat in Quake-Stricken Jindires: Levelled Neighborhoods, Refugees under the Rubble

08 February 2023, Syria, Jindires: A general view of the destruction caused by the deadly earthquake that tore through the Turkish-Syrian border. (dpa)
08 February 2023, Syria, Jindires: A general view of the destruction caused by the deadly earthquake that tore through the Turkish-Syrian border. (dpa)

Teams from Syria’s Civil Defense (White Helmets), as well as civilian volunteers, have continued their search and rescue efforts of survivors of the devastating earthquake that struck the country and neighboring Türkiye on Monday.

They are carrying out their efforts in the opposition-held regions in Syria's northwest.

They are in a race against time to rescue as many people as possible from under the rubble. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake has killed at least 20,000 people in Syria and Türkiye. Hopes are dwindling to find survivors.

In the Idlib’s Jindires region, Umm Mahmoud, 51, tearily look on at what was once her neighborhood. She looks at the rubble that was once her neighbors’ homes. They did not survive the quake.

She spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat about the early moments when the earthquake struck.

“We were asleep. My husband, son and I. We almost lost our minds from fright. The trembling started and parts of our house began to fall on us. We managed to escape and run to an area that is not surrounded by buildings,” she recalled.

Screams and shouts soon began to rise from the houses nearby.

“Dust and pitch darkness soon pervaded the area. The screams then started to die down. We soon realized that an earthquake had destroyed everything in the city,” Umm Mahmoud said.

She added that her family tried to head back to its home to retrieve some clothes and blankets, but the roads leading to it were blocked by piles of rubble. “It was then that we realized the extent of the calamity,” she remarked.

Hundreds of buildings were turned to rubble in the quake. Dozens of heavy vehicles and Civil Defense teams are working tirelessly on the rescue efforts.

Hassan, 33, is a refugee from the Hama countryside. He is leading a group of civilian volunteers in the rescue efforts in the eastern section of Jindires.

He only has simple tools and hammers at his disposal. Along with a number of his friends, he joined rescue efforts after witnessing the extent of the devastation and the limited means of the Civil Defense teams.

The chances of finding surviving are dropping by the hour, he stated. Every delay may take place at the cost of losing a life.

The latest figures showed that 513 people were killed and 831 wounded in Jindires. Dozens of families remain trapped under the rubble.

Given the limited means, the rescue operations are painfully slow. Some 233 houses were completely destroyed and 120 were partially damaged and are susceptible to collapse at any moment.

Predominantly Kurdish Jindires is located in northwestern Aleppo. Its population stood at nearly 13,000 people before the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011.

It was held by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) for years before Turkish forces and their allied Syrian armed factions seized control of it in March 2018 during Türkiye’s Operation Olive Branch.

Since then, it became home to over 30,000 refugees from the Aleppo and Idlib countrysides who had fled the regime. Now, many of these refugees have died in the earthquake.



A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
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A Family Digs Through Trash for Bits of Food, Showing Gaza's Growing Desperation

The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news
The Taeima family is among more than two million Palestinians who are on the brink of famine after 19 months of war between Hamas and Israel. The high risk of famine has generated international outrage against Israel over its nearly three-month blockade and escalating military offensive in Gaza. - AP news

With flies buzzing all around them, the woman and her daughter picked through the pile of garbage bags for scraps of food at the foot of a destroyed building in Gaza City. She found a small pile of cooked rice, a few scraps of bread, a box with some smears of white cheese still inside.

Islam Abu Taeima picked soggy bits from a piece of bread and put the dry part in her sack. She will take what she found back to the school where she and hundreds of other families live, boil it and serve it to her five children, she said.

“We’re dying of hunger,” she said. “If we don’t eat, we’ll die.”

Her rummaging for food is a new sign of the depths of desperation being reached in Gaza, where the population of some 2.3 million has been pushed toward famine by Israel’s nearly three-month blockade. The entry of a small amount of aid in the past week has done almost nothing to ease the situation, The AP news reported.

Before the war, it was rare to see anyone searching through garbage for anything, despite the widespread poverty in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its military campaign decimating the strip after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, it has been common to see children searching through growing, stinking piles of uncollected garbage for wood or plastic to burn in their family's cooking fire or for anything worth selling — but not for food. For food, they might search through the rubble of damaged buildings, hoping for abandoned canned goods.

But Abu Taeima says she has no options left. She and her 9-year-old daughter Waed wander around Gaza City, looking for leftovers discarded in the trash.

“This is our life day to day,” she said. “If we don’t gather anything, then we don’t eat.”

It's still not common, but now people picking food from trash are occasionally seen. Some come out after dark because of the shame.

“I feel sorry for myself because I’m educated and despite that I’m eating from the trash,” said Abu Taeima, who has a bachelor’s degree in English from Al-Quds Open University in Gaza.

Her family struggled to get by even before the war, she said. Abu Taeima has worked for a short time in the past as a secretary for UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees and the biggest employer in Gaza. She also worked as a reader for blind people. Her husband worked briefly as a security guard for UNRWA. He was wounded in the 2021 war between Hamas and Israel and has been unable to work since.

Israel cut off all food, medicine and other supplies to Gaza on March 2. It said the blockade and its subsequent resumption of the war aimed to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. But warnings of famine have stoked international criticism of Israel.

It allowed several hundred trucks into Gaza last week. But much of it hasn’t reached the population, either aid trucks were looted or because of Israeli military restrictions on aid workers’ movements, especially in northern Gaza, according to the UN Aid groups say the amount of supplies allowed in is nowhere near enough to meet mounting needs.

Abu Taeima and her family fled their home in the Shati refugee camp on the northern side of Gaza City in November 2023. At the time she and one of her children were wounded in a tank shelling, she said.

They first headed to the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah where they sheltered in a tent for five months. They then moved to the central town of Deir al-Balah a year ago when Israel first invaded Rafah.

During a two-month ceasefire that began in January, they went back to Shati, but their landlord refused to let them back into their apartment because they couldn’t pay rent, she said.

Several schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City at first refused to receive them because they were designated for people who fled towns in northern Gaza. Only when she threatened to set herself and her family on fire did one school give them a space, she said.

Abu Taeima said her family can’t afford anything in the market, where prices have skyrocketed for the little food that remains on sale. She said she has tried going to charity kitchens, but every time they run out of food before she gets any. Such kitchens, producing free meals, have become the last source of food for many in Gaza, and giant crowds flood them every day, pushing and shoving to get a meal.

“People are struggling, and no one is going to be generous with you,” she said. “So collecting from the trash is better.”

The risk of catching disease isn't at the top of her list of worries.

“Starvation is the biggest disease,” she said.