JINDAYRIS, Syria – “Ten of us pile into this truck. We sleep sitting up,” said the 42-year-old, wearing multiple layers of clothes and a wooled scarf wrapped around her head against the biting winter cold.
More than 40,000 people were killed across the two countries by the February 6 disaster that flattened entire districts, including in Abdallah’s home city of Jindayris on the Turkish border. Jindayris is among the cities worst-hit by the quake that killed more than 3,600 people across five Syrian provinces, claiming the highest death tolls in Idlib and Aleppo.
At night, the women and children huddle inside them, under tattered plastic sheets and blankets, while Ahmed and the other men sleep under the stars. “Then we will see what to do next, but this is what we ask for now,” he added. “We are not thinking about the future. The situation we are in now does not allow it.”Some international aid has arrived in the region, including in truck convoys that crossed the Turkish borders, but many here remain in desperate need.
In another camp, on the outskirts of Jindayris, 63-year-old Khawthar al-Shaqi now lives with her daughter and grandchildren after spending the first four nights in the open.