Sedat, a 17-year-old boy from Kahramanmaras, Turkey, told CNN, “We are face to face with a great disaster”

Rescue workers began to give up on finding survivors in Turkey and Syria as the window for finding people alive began to close.

A second 7.5 magnitude earthquake was followed by more than 100 aftershocks and a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck southern Turkey in the early hours of Monday. Over 11,000 people have been killed across Syria and Turkey, hundreds more are trapped under the rubble.

On Wednesday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter of the quake, telling survivors that “we are face to face with a great disaster.” The public is angry at the government’s response to the earthquake and it has caused shortfalls by the government in the immediate aftermath. The president cited winter weather conditions and destroyed infrastructure, including airport runways, as complicating factors.

I think he’s still alive, since I know my son is inside. She told NPR that his brother was digging to find him. Hours later, as diggers chipped away at the ruins of the building, rescuers found Sedat’s body and wrapped it in a blanket for his mother to say goodbye.

The Syrian Civil War Disrupts Hilf Operations: The First Five Days of the Qamak Earthquake and How the Middle East Has Done It

Civil war disrupts aid efforts: The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing his own people.

Seventy countries and 14 international organizations have offered Turkey relief following the quake, Erdogan said on Tuesday, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Israel and Russia.

Turkey’s emergency management agency, AFAD, reports it has set up more than 70,000 tents for emergency shelter to the more than 380,000 people who have been temporarily displaced by this disaster.

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Syrian victims of the devastating earthquake that hit their country and Turkey on Monday may become hostages of the politics that have divided Syria for over a decade, analysts have warned.

“Syrians must not be forgotten,” Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, told CNN. Those who are vulnerable are often the ones who suffer the most during disasters.

Turkey is a NATO member that has shown marked growth in recent years. Syria, on the other hand, is ruled by a myriad of disparate groups. Its regime, internationally sidelined and heavily sanctioned due to its brutal suppression of an uprising there that started in 2011, counts Iran and Russia as its closest allies – both global pariahs.

Most western countries don’t like the Syrian regime. But leader Bashar al-Assad has begun forging ties with former enemies as regional states welcome him back into the fold. Last year, the United Arab Emirates welcomed Assad in Abu Dhabi, and last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the pair may soon meet for peace talks.

“There is likely to be less international assistance provided to opposition areas because that is additionally complicated,” Lister told CNN. It is not controlled by a government and that makes it hard for aid operators.

That hasn’t been received well by activists and observers who fear that the regime could hamper timely aid to thousands of quake victims in rebel-held areas, most of whom are women and children, according to the UN.

In northwest Syria, where the UN says more than 4.1 million people already depend on humanitarian aid, a political and military standoff between Assad and opposition forces is only expected to stifle international assistance.

Madevi Sun-Suon, a spokesman for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, told CNN that they are looking for new ways to reach people in need. “We do have aid but this road issue is a big challenge as of now.”

The Syrian regime has also used the opportunity to call for sanctions against it to be lifted. Its UN envoy Sabbagh said on Tuesday that planes refused to land at Syrian airports because of American and European sanctions. “So even those countries who want to send humanitarian assistance, they cannot use the airplane cargo because of the sanctions,” he said in New York.

In November, a UN-appointed human rights expert called for the immediate lifting of unilateral sanctions against Syria, saying they are exacerbating the destruction and trauma suffered by ordinary citizens there.

“It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now – gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a media briefing on Monday.

“It’s a very convenient time for the regime to be making that argument because if sanctions were dropped, the ramifications of the much broader geopolitical situation would be game changing,” said Lister.

The Saudi Crown Prince’s Brief Conversation with the Emir of Qatar: Two Years after the Arab-Bahrabi Dialogue of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt

The Iranian army gave a description of another underground base, which houses drones, as the country was trying to protect its military assets from a potential air strike by Israel.

The prime minister of Sweden said Tuesday that he would restart negotiations to join NATO once Turkey became a member.

Background: Finland and Sweden sought NATO membership shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, and while most member states have ratified the applications, Turkey has yet to give its approval in what must be a unanimous process. Turkey has not supported Sweden’s application even though it looks positive on it, despite the two Nordic neighbors wanting to join together.

Why it matters: The three nations last year reached an agreement on a way forward, but Ankara suspended talks last month as tensions rose following protests in Stockholm, where a far-right politician burned a copy of the Quran. The people of Turkey will decide in May whether to keep their government.

Why it matters: The move comes amid an apparent thaw in relations. Two years after the Arab boycott of all Gulf states was lifted, the crown prince spoke to the emir of Qatar in a phone call. The conversation came after the Qatari emir and Bahrain’s king attended a small Arab summit hosted by the UAE’s president in Abu Dhabi.

Background: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt ended a three-year political and economic boycott of Qatar in January 2021. Since then there has been no talks between the two countries to resolve their differences. Travel and trade links were restored in 2021.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/middleeast/syria-left-behind-earthquake-mime-intl/index.html

AlMosahf: The Quran, the Islamic Holy Book, Has Been Suspended Until Twitter Shuts Down

AlMosahf (The Quran), an account that tweeted snippets from the Islamic holy book, had more than 13 million followers before Twitter took action against it.

One user said that Musk had not violated the rules because of the quotes from the Holy Quran. We want the account to be returned to normal.

Not all users were upset with the suspension. They decried that the account’s incomplete Quranic verse were taken out of context and changed the meaning of the text.

The account owner appears to run sister accounts in English, French and German, on which it posts translations of Quranic verses. Another sister account that shows Quranic videos has been campaigning for the original account to be unblocked.

Rescue crews worked through cold temperatures to pull people out of the rubble of collapsed buildings in Turkey and northern Syria. The time between the initial magnitude of Monday’s earthquake and now is when most survivors of disasters can be found.

The aftermath of a major earthquake: Many lives in the rubble, few supplies, and few aid workers in the rebel-held northwestern Syria

The Istanbul stock exchange had a circuit breaker that halted trading when the initial declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was in a state of disrepair due to inflation.

The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is great. Volunteers and civil defense groups — themselves earthquake survivors — pull a boy out from the rubble alive in rebel-held northwestern Syria.

NPR was able to reach Kellieh on Wednesday by phone. He spoke from Jinderes, a part of Syria’s Aleppo province that’s under opposition control. He said countless buildings there have collapsed. People are in the streets in the freezing cold, waiting for aid to arrive. Buildings are still unlivable from aftershocks.

He says that humanitarian aid and international aid hasn’t appeared 72 hours after the earthquake.

“Rescue efforts are being carried out by poorly equipped civil defense groups and civilians are trying to help,” Kelliah said. Everyone is waiting for international rescue and aid to be able to process what’s happened.

The local authorities of the rebel-held part of Syria say 11,000 families are homeless as a result of the earthquake. Up to 2,000 deaths have been reported and thousands more injured, according to the United Nations.

Rescue efforts are continuing as other people are trapped under the rubble. Stories of miraculous rescues, like that of a baby girl born under the rubble, are a bullhorn for what’s at stake.

“The situation remains grim in north-west Syria where only five percent of reported sites are being covered by search and rescue,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.

People are digging with their own hands in many areas, but the situation is particularly dire in northwestern Syria, where there is little heavy machinery to lift rubble. Hospitals are having fuel shortages because of power outages.

The earthquake that killed a Syrian civilian killed last year forced the delivery of humanitarian aid through the crossings of the Bab al-Hawa crossing

The only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria is the Bab al-Hawa crossing and the convoy which crossed it on Thursday carried shelter items and non food items.

The challenge of freezing temperatures is amplified by the fact that affected areas in both Turkey and Syria are facing colder than normal temperatures. For example, the Syrian city of Aleppo is forecast to have lows of -3°C to -2°C (27°F to 28°F) through this weekend, whereas February low are normally 2.5°C (36°F).

Assad stood near the building that was destroyed by the earthquake and claimed that the Western countries didn’t care about the human condition. This is in line with statements heard from government officials and the state run media in Syria who have blamed the lack of humanitarian aid on the US and EU sanctions.

Assad and his wife, Asma, visited different sites affected by the earthquake and visited survivors at a hospital in Aleppo, pictures on state-run news agency SANA showed.

The delivery of supplies to northern Syria has been complicated because of the civil war in which Assad is accused of killing his own people. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad says any aid it receives must go through the capital Damascus.