Hardly any aid reaches opposition areas in northwestern Syria

Euskaraz irakurri: Just iritsi da laguntza Siriako oposizioaren kontrolpean dauden eremuetara

the group of rescuers white helmetswhich operates in opposition areas in northwestern Syria, where humanitarian aid has barely arrived after the earthquakes, today denounced that only one team of Spaniards and another Egyptian have gone to this area to help with rescue tasks.

The Spanish NGO open arms gained access to opposition areas in Syria on Thursday. However, the first team of volunteers to arrive was an Egyptian.

After the earthquakes that hit Syria, Turkey and Kurdistan since Monday morning, access for rescuers and humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria is almost non-existent, especially since there is only one entry step, that of Bab el Hawaconnecting Turkey to the Syrian province of Idlib.

The first UN humanitarian convoy arrived through that crossing yesterday, but until then no supplies had arrived in the provinces’ areas Idlib and Aleppo in the hands of the opposition, surrounded by territory of rival actors and directly accessible only from the other side of the Turkish divide.

The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğanreported this Friday that 18,991 people have died in the Ottoman state alone due to the earthquakes recorded on Monday, the total is now 22,375.

Erdogan has also stressed that some 75,000 people have been brought to safety despite the “setbacks” of the rescue teams.

Erdogan has acknowledged that the authorities have done so issues to manage the effects of the earthquake due to the huge affected area and the degree of destruction.

For its part, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), under the Interior Ministry, has detailed that the number of injured now stands at 74,242, according to Turkey’s state news agency Anatolia.

In the early hours of the morning, emergency services have continued to rescue people from under the rubble for nearly 100 hours after the quakes, an increasingly complicated task since the standard time for a human to survive without drinking water or food in disasters like this is 72 hours.

As emergency services work continues, Turkish authorities have vowed to take action against negligent housing construction, as poor construction is suspected to have played a role in the high death toll.

For its part, the earthquakes killed nearly 3,384 people and injured 5,200 in Syria, among the figures offered by the health authorities of the government of Bashar al Assad and those of opponents in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo (northwest), according to Defense Syrian citizen, known as ‘white helmets’.