The White Helmets, rescuers from rebel areas in Syria, on Wednesday implored the international community to send teams to help them, in a race against time to save people trapped under the rubble after the deadly earthquake.
The death toll from the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday has exceeded 11,000, including more than 2,600 in Syria, half of them in the northern and northwestern areas under rebel control.
These regions close to Turkey are deprived of Syrian government aid and usually depend on aid from Ankara, currently caught up in the disaster on its own territory.
“We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities with regard to civilian casualties. We need international rescue teams to enter our regions,” White Helmets spokesman Mohammad al-Shebli told AFP.
“It’s a real race against time, people are dying every second under the rubble,” he added. “Hundreds of families are still missing or trapped under the rubble.”
More than 3,300 White Helmets volunteers have been mobilized since the earthquake, but they are still sorely lacking in personnel and equipment.
They “do not have search dogs to determine under which collapsed buildings there are victims”, explains Mr. Chebli.
Working in difficult conditions, in the cold and in the light of flashlights at night, the rescuers are often assisted by residents, who try to clear away the rubble using pickaxes or spades and sometimes bare hands.
“The odds are dwindling”
As time passes, “the chances of saving people dwindle,” said the spokesperson, reached by telephone by AFP in Turkey. “We need heavy equipment, spare parts for our equipment. »
“All the teams are exhausted, but we continue to work. Every time we manage to get people alive from the rubble, it gives us energy and hope,” White Helmets volunteer Fatima al-Abid told AFP.
A video that has gone viral shows a crowd erupting in joy as rescuers pull two children out of the rubble. “The joy of the rescuers was indescribable”, says this volunteer joined with Sarmada in the province of Aleppo.
The White Helmets receive foreign funding, and the United Kingdom announced on Tuesday that it would grant them additional aid of around 900,000 euros (1.3 million Canadian dollars). Egypt, for its part, sent a technical team and doctors.
More than four million people live in the rebel areas in the north, close to Turkey.
Aid is being brought there through a single crossing point from Turkey, but the road leading to the crossing from there has been damaged, temporarily disrupting relief operations, according to the UN.
The Idlib area, where around three million people live, is controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
During a press conference in Idleb on Wednesday, an official of the health sector of this area, Hussein Bazar, affirmed that “the region is in urgent need of all forms of medical aid”.
“The situation in Idleb and in the liberated areas is catastrophic […] and we are no longer able to provide health aid to people who need it,” he said.
According to the White Helmets, which also take care of the burials of the victims, the morgues of the hospitals have exceeded their capacity.
According to the NGO Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), present in this region, the situation is very difficult in the hospitals of the region.
“The biggest problem is the fact that the electricity is out. We have fuel oil that can power the generators for two or three days at most,” Mohammad Eisa, a doctor from this organization who is in Turkey, told AFP.