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.
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Body of missing rabbi Zvi Kogan found in UAE – as Israeli PM says he was murdered in ‘antisemitic terror incident’
The COP29 climate talks have reached a last ditch deal on cash for developing countries, pulling the summit back from the brink of collapse after a group of countries stormed out of a negotiating room earlier.
The slew of deals finally signed off in the small hours of Sunday morning in Azerbaijan includes one that proved hardest of all – one about money.
Eventually the more than 190 countries in Baku agreed a target for richer polluting countries such as the UK, EU and Japan to drum up $300bn a year by 2035 to help poorer nations both curb and adapt to climate change.
It is a far cry from the $1.3trn experts say is needed, and from the $500bn that vulnerable countries like Uganda had said they would be willing to accept.
But in the end they were forced to, knowing they could not afford to live without it, nor wait until next year to try again, when a Donald Trump presidency would make things even harder.
Bolivia’s lead negotiator Diego Pacheco called it an “insult”, while the Marshall Islands’ Tina Stege said it was “not nearly enough, but it’s a start”.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said: “This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps.”
The funding deal was clinched more than 24 hours into overtime, and against what felt like all the odds.
The talks were rocked from the start by the incoming presidency of climate denier Mr Trump, the moment Argentina’s team were recalled back to Buenos Aires by their right-wing president and a controversial letter that sent shockwaves through the United Nations.
Pic: AP
The fraught two weeks of negotiations pitted the anger of developing countries who are footing the bill for more dangerous weather that they did little to cause, against the tight public finances of rich countries.
A relieved Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, climate envoy for Panama, said there is “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Just hours ago, the talks almost fell apart as furious vulnerable nations stormed out of negotiations in frustration over that elusive funding goal.
They were also angry with oil and gas producing countries, who stood accused of trying to dilute aspects of the deal on cutting fossil fuels.
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Climate-vulnerable nations storm out of talks
The UN talks work on consensus, meaning everyone has to agree for a deal to fly.
A row over how to follow up on last year’s pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels” was left unresolved and punted into next year, following objections from Chile and Switzerland for being too weak.
A draft deal simply “reaffirmed” the commitment but did not dial up the pressure in the way the UK, EU, island states and many others here wanted.
Saudi Arabia fought the hardest against any step forward on cutting fossil fuels, the primary cause of climate change that is intensifying floods, drought and fires around the world.
Governments did manage to strike a deal on carbon markets at COP29, which has been 10 years in the making and will allow countries to trade emissions cuts.
‘Not everything we wanted’
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The UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said the deal is “not everything we or others wanted”, but described it as a “step forward”.
“It’s a deal that will drive forward the clean energy transition, which is essential for jobs and growth in Britain and for protecting us all against the worsening climate crisis,” he added.
“Today’s agreement sends the signal that the clean energy transition is unstoppable.
“It is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century and through our championing of it we can help crowd in private investment.”
Protesters at the summit in Baku. Pic: AP
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The Azerbaijan team leading COP29 said: “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator.
“We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.”
At least 20 people have been killed and 66 injured in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.
Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dig through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.
The attack destroyed an eight-storey residential building and badly damaged several others around it in the Basta neighbourhood at 4am (2am UK time) on Saturday.
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut
The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack and has not commented on the casualties.
At least four bombs were dropped in the attack – the fourth targeting the city centre this week.
A separate drone strike in the southern port city of Tyre this morning killed two people and injured three, according to the state-run National News Agency.
The victims were Palestinian refugees from the nearby al Rashidieh camp who were out fishing, according to Mohammed Bikai, spokesperson for the Fatah Palestinian faction in the Tyre area.
Israel’s military warned residents today in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they were near Hezbollah facilities, which the army would target in the near future. The warning, posted on X, told people to evacuate at least 500 metres away.
The army said that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It said it hit several command centres and weapons storage facilities.
Pic: AP
Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.
Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, at least 3,670 people have been killed in Israeli attacks there, with more than 15,400 wounded.
It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
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Meanwhile, six people, including three children and two women, were killed in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
Some 44,176 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.
US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.
Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
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