In a hospital in northwestern Syria, Oussama Abdelhamid, injured in the head, cannot hold back his tears: the building where he lives with his family collapsed in the middle of the night.
This resident of a village bordering Turkey miraculously survived the violent earthquake that killed more than two thousand people in the two countries.
“We were sleeping when we felt a very strong earthquake,” he told AFP, wearing a long brown abaya.
“With my wife and children, we ran to the door of our apartment on the third floor. As soon as we opened it, the whole building collapsed,” he continued after being treated at Al-Rahma hospital in the city of Darkouch.
The hospital is located in the province of Idlib, the last major stronghold held by rebels and jihadists in Syria, ravaged by nearly twelve years of war.
AFP
Within moments, Osama Abdelhamid found himself under the rubble of the four-storey building in the village of Azmarine, but “God the Protector” miraculously saved him and his family, he said.
“The walls fell on us, but my son managed to get out and started screaming, then people gathered and pulled us out of the rubble,” he adds very moved, after being treated at the hospital. hospital. All his neighbors were killed.
Al-Rahma hospital is crowded, with the wounded arriving continuously by ambulances, including a large number of children, according to an AFP correspondent. The bodies of at least thirty people have arrived at the facility.
In one of the hospital rooms, the wounded are lying on beds close to each other, some with their heads wrapped in bandages and others suffering from broken bones or bruises.
In another room, a little girl screams as she is given an injection, before a cast is put on her hand. A boy with a bandaged head sits next to her.
“Under the rubble”
“The situation is very serious, many people are still under the rubble of residential buildings,” Majid Ibrahim, a surgeon, told AFP.
In these areas held by the rebels fighting the Damascus regime, there are at least 380 dead.
Mohammed Barakat, 24 and already a father of four, lies on a bed in Al-Rahma Hospital, where he is being treated for facial injuries and a broken leg, caused by a wall falling on him.
AFP
“We left the house because it is a ground floor and it is old. But the walls of neighboring buildings started falling on us while we were in the street,” he told AFP.
In the town of Sarmada, north of Idleb, an adjoining block of buildings was flattened, so solar panels and water tanks remained intact. Mattresses and blankets litter the rubble.
An AFP photographer saw rescue workers trying to clear the rubble in search of survivors, while a bulldozer and other vehicles lifted roofs and walls.
“Last judgement”
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey early Monday. The joint death toll in Syria and Turkey is over 2,300.
Among them are more than 450 dead in areas under the control of the Syrian regime, including the city of Aleppo in the north, reconquered in its entirety by the forces of Damascus at the cost of fierce fighting at the end of 2016.
When he felt the earthquake, Anas Habache, 37, went to get his child and asked his pregnant wife to run to him at the entrance of their apartment on the third and last floor of a building. from Aleppo.
AFP
“We raced down the stairs like crazy, and as soon as we got to the street, we saw dozens of frightened families,” he says.
“There were some who were on their knees praying, others were crying, as if it were the day of the last judgment”, he adds.
“I didn’t feel anything like it during all these years of war, the situation is much harder than the bombs,” says Anas Habache.