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.
Turkey-Syria earthquake – latest: Turkey refuses aid from neighbouring Cyprus
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.
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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