Turkey-Syria earthquake: Rebel leader in Idlib calls for urgent international help as families devastated by quake
Syria’s suffering is a unique desolation and inside Idlib we’ve seen the face of utter desperation.
Here, they thought their plight couldn’t get any worse than running from shelling and cowering from regime bombs, but what was already an horrendously wretched life for millions, has become a whole lot more tragic since the earthquake.
People fear the cold and hunger will kill them now.
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Those who’ve fled from Bashar al Assad’s bombs and bullets for 12 years, have found themselves running again as their homes collapsed and the earthquakes tore into infrastructure already massively weakened by years of war.
We watched in Salquin as the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defence group which receives funding from the UK, searched through piles of rubble.
The chances of finding anyone alive now seems crazily optimistic but they don’t give up their digging and searching. It goes on day and night.
Just 12 hours earlier, a young man had been pulled out of here alive. Instances like that keep them going.
They’re spurred on too by the grim realisation they are on their own and there’s no one coming anytime soon to help them.
Five days on from the worst set of earthquakes in this region in a century, there appears to be no international aid of any note and no teams of search and rescue experts.
Idlib is the last pocket of Syria holding out against Basher al Assad’s regime in Damascus and is held by an armed group called Hayat Tahir al Sham (HTS), headed by Abu Mohammed al Jolani.
He was once a member of al Qaeda before falling out with the group and forming his own fighting not only al Qaeda remnants, but Islamic State cells and the Assad regime as well.
He’s still on a terrorist most-wanted list drawn up by a number of nations including the US.
But when we spoke to him at the destroyed site in Salquin where they were searching for a missing family, he denounced the international community for not helping the desperate people of northwest Syria.
“The children being found under this rubble are not terrorists,” he said.
He called on the world to discard politics, concentrate on the people, and send help to the region.
We saw a father sitting in the dark, clutching a blanket wrapped round his dead four-year-old son.
The child – his face covered with dust and the blue-grey cold mask of death – was called Mohammed.
He’d been pulled out after four days trapped in the rubble, still wearing his pyjamas.
His father, Saleem, was in shock, his face stony hard, devoid of any emotion.
He had his little boy laid near a fire for warmth, which he could no longer feel, as if somehow it helped him, as if it might bring him the comfort his father couldn’t provide for the previous four days.
Saleem had no way of knowing if his little boy had laid there, alive but trapped and frightened for days on end waiting for the help which never arrived.
Saleem somehow scrambled to safety while grabbing the hand of his little girl, Mace, and running.
Mace is eight years old and she and Saleem are the only ones who made it out.
Behind them, men from the White Helmets operated diggers tearing into the rubble while colleagues lifted rocks and pulled at blankets peeping out from them.
They were trying to find Saleem’s 10-year-old son Abdul Razek and his wife Amira.
“I will not leave until I find them,” he said. “I cannot.”
He breaks off occasionally, pleading with the White Helmets to try different corners of what was once their home.
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The Team leader is Mustafa Kharzum and he knows all about the grief of losing a son.
His died from illness but the loss of a child never leaves a heartbroken parent.
“I know what he’s going through and I’ve promised him I will not leave here until we find his family,” Mustafa says.
They’re there all night and then all morning. By midday they’re confident they are not still in the rubble, so they start to trek through the hospitals.
Could they still be alive and, somehow, someone has taken them there?
There’s a tiny moment of hope yet again but it’s soon crushed when they find the bodies of both mother and son in the morgue of a hospital.
Saleem is distraught. “They were my world,” he says, “I worked for them. I did everything for them.”
His little girl Mace sobs as crowds of mourners gather round the family home in Mashhead Roheen, close to the Turkish border.
The family fled Ma’arat al Numan where they used to live when the Assad regime troops moved in three years ago.
They survived the long war only to see half the family wiped out in the earthquake.
At the home, the family’s female relatives wash the little boys’ bodies ready for burial.
Tiny children are wailing and howling with grief.
The grandmother, Fatima, collapses and is carried to a chair. She’s seen three of her sons die in the fighting and war – now she’s mourning a daughter and two grandsons.
This misery is too much to bear for them. The heartache is never ending for the Syrian people and once again, they’re feeling no one anywhere is hearing their cries or cares about their sorrow.
Alex Crawford was reporting from Idlib in northwestern Syria with camera operator Jake Britton, and producers Chris Cunningham and Mahmoud Mosa.
There will be a special programme called Disaster Zone: The Turkey-Syria Earthquake on Sky News this evening at 9.30pm.
Donald Trump has said that his 28-point peace plan for Ukraine is “by far” not the “final offer”, ahead of crisis talks in Geneva.
Meeting on the sidelines of a G20 summit in South Africa, European and other Western leaders scrambled to respond to the US president’s demand for Ukraine to accept the plan drawn up by the Trump administration and the Kremlin.
In a joint statement on Saturday, they said the plan announced on Friday could serve as a basis for talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine but required “additional work”.
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How Ukraine peace plan came about
Follow the latest on the Ukraine peace plan
As a result, a meeting has been hastily convened in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday, where national security advisers from the E3 – France, Britain and Germany – will meet EU, US and Ukrainian officials for further discussions.
Ahead of the talks, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address to his nation that Ukrainian representatives at the talks “know how to protect Ukrainian national interests and exactly what is needed to prevent Russia from carrying out” another invasion.
“Real peace is always based on security and justice,” the Ukrainian leader added.
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PM: ‘More to do’ on US Ukraine peace plan
The 28-point peace plan closely resembles the list of demands repeatedly stated by the Kremlin since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago and if adopted, would see Ukraine cede territory to Russia – and cut the size of its military.
Mr Trump has said he wants a response from Ukraine by Thursday, while suggesting an extension could be possible.
On Saturday, Mr Trump told reporters outside the White House that the plan was not the “final offer” when asked.
He said: “We’d like to get the peace, it should’ve happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should’ve never happened. If I was president, it would have never happened. We’re trying to get it ended. One way or another, we have to get it ended.”
His secretary of state Marco Rubio insisted that the peace proposal was authored by the US, despite what a handful of senators have alleged.
“It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine,” he said.
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The 28-point peace plan explained
Leaders have sought to balance praise for President Trump’s attempt to end the war with recognition that some terms in his proposal are unpalatable for Kyiv.
“There are many things that cannot simply be an American proposal, which requires broader consultation,” French
President Emmanuel Macron said on the sidelines of the G20, adding that an agreement had to allow for peace for Ukrainians and “security for all Europeans”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz underlined the importance to Europe of supporting Ukraine.
“If Ukraine loses this war and possibly collapses, it will have an impact on European politics as a whole, on the entire European continent. And that is why we are so committed to this issue,” he said.
“There is currently an opportunity to end this war, but we are still quite a long way from a good outcome for everyone.”
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told reporters in Johannesburg: “We are concerned about [caps on military], because it’s fundamental that Ukraine has to be able to defend itself if there’s a ceasefire.”
He said the proposal “requires additional work”, adding: “And that’s why there’s been the agreement that in Geneva tomorrow [Sunday], you’ll have senior US personnel, you’ll have European NSAs [national security advisers], including the UK NSA, and obviously Ukrainians there to work further on the draft.”
Sir Keir also spoke to Mr Trump, relaying discussions held at G20 to the US leader, according to a Downing Street spokesperson, who added that the two leaders would speak again on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir, who has defended his decision to fly to the G20 days before a difficult budget, said the role of the G20 is “critical at this moment”.
“The G20 has worked together before to fix fundamental problems in the global economy. We need to find ways to play a constructive role again today in the face of the world challenges,” he said.
“I’d like to see us come together around a five-point plan for growth that leaves no one behind.”
Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz at the G20 summit. Pic: PA
The US, however, is boycotting the talks.
The Trump administration made its opposition to South Africa’s G20 agenda clear earlier this year when the country started holding meetings ahead of the summit. South Africa gets to set the agenda as the country holding the rotating G20 presidency.
G20 leaders broke with tradition and adopted a declaration at the start of their summit – despite opposition from the US.
Vincent Magwenya, spokesman for South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, said a leaders’ declaration was adopted unanimously in Johannesburg.
The White House later accused South Africa of refusing to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency.
Pic: AP
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Analysis: Europe scrambles at G20 over Ukraine peace plane
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The G20 bloc was formed in 1999 as a bridge between rich and poor nations to confront global financial crises.
While it often operates in the shadow of the powerful Group of Seven nations, G20 members represent around 85% of the world’s economy, 75% of international trade and more than half the global population.
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