ATAREB, Syria — After years of battle, residents of areas in northwest Syria struck by a large earthquake are grappling with their new and worsening actuality.

Virtually one week after the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern Syria and neighboring Turkey, the U.N. has acknowledged a global failure to assist Syrian quake victims.

In Atareb, a city that Syrian rebels nonetheless maintain after years of preventing authorities troops, survivors dug via the particles of their destroyed properties on Sunday, selecting up the remnants of their shattered lives and on the lookout for methods to heal after the most recent in a collection of humanitarian disasters to hit the war-battered space.

Excavators lifted rubble and native males with shovels and picks destroyed columns to even out a demolished constructing.

Dozens of newly displaced households gathered for decent meal handouts from native volunteers and the native opposition-run authorities. A personal citizen went tent to tent to present out wads of money in a makeshift camp — the equal of about $18 — to every household.

Syrians have been doing what they’ve honed over years of crises: counting on themselves to choose up the items and transfer on.

“We’re licking our personal wounds,” mentioned Hekmat Hamoud, who had been displaced twice by Syria’s ongoing battle, earlier than discovering himself trapped for hours beneath rubble.

The foremost earthquake that struck Monday hit arduous Syria’s northwestern rebel-held enclave, the place over 4 million folks for years have struggled to deal with ruthless airstrikes and rampant poverty.

Many are internally displaced from the continued battle and dwelling in crowded tent settlements. The quake killed over 2,000 folks within the space, and displaced many extra for a second time, forcing some to sleep underneath olive groves within the frigid winter climate.

U.N. Underneath-Secretary-Basic for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, acknowledged in a press release that Syrians have been left “on the lookout for worldwide assist that hasn’t arrived.”

“We’ve up to now failed the folks in north-west Syria. They rightly really feel deserted,” he mentioned.

“My responsibility and our obligation is to right this failure as quick as we are able to.”

Northwest Syria depends nearly solely on assist for survival, however post-quake worldwide help has been gradual to succeed in the world. The primary U.N. convoy to succeed in the world from Turkey was on Thursday, three days after the earthquake.

Earlier than that, the one cargo coming throughout the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Turkey-Syria border was a gentle stream of our bodies of earthquake victims coming residence for burial — Syrian refugees who had fled the battle of their nation and settled in Turkey however perished within the quake.

U.N. assist despatched from Turkey to Syria is just licensed to enter by way of the Bab al-Hawa crossing, and roads to the crossing have been rendered impassable after the quake. Whereas worldwide assist can be despatched from Syrian government-held areas to rebel-held areas within the northwest, this faces its personal set of hurdles.

Critics of the federal government of President Bashar Assad say that assist funneled via government-held areas in Syria faces paperwork and the danger that authorities will misappropriate or divert the help to assist folks near the federal government.

A convoy carrying U.N. assist that had been scheduled to cross into rebel-held Idlib from the federal government space on Sunday was canceled after its entry was blocked by the the Qaida-affiliated insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which dominates the world. An administrative arm of the group mentioned in a press release two days earlier than that “the liberated areas don’t have crossings with the felony regime.” It asserted that Bab al-Hawa is the one crossing via which humanitarian help may enter.

Strips of northern Syria are held by a patchwork of sometimes-conflicting teams, additional hindering assist deliveries. Turkish-backed rebels have blocked assist convoys from reaching earthquake victims that have been despatched by rival U.S.-backed Kurdish teams in neighboring areas.

Geir Pedersen, the U.N. particular envoy for Syria, who landed in Damascus Sunday, instructed reporters, “We are attempting to inform everybody, put politics apart. That is the time to unite behind the widespread effort to assist the Syrian folks.”

Whereas assist has been gradual to succeed in the northwest, a variety of nations that had lower ties with Damascus throughout Syria’s civil battle have despatched assist to authorities areas. Arab nations together with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have stepped in, with the UAE’s overseas minister visiting Damascus and assembly with Assad Sunday.

The top of the White Helmets, a civil protection group working within the rebel-held northwest, Raed al-Saleh, mentioned in a press release that Griffiths’ go to was “too little, too late.”

Al-Saleh met with Griffiths to demand the opening of extra cross-border routes for assist to enter with out ready for authorization from the U.N. Safety Council.

Saleh mentioned native rescue groups’ requires worldwide help had gone unheeded for days “and through this time, numerous lives have been needlessly misplaced.”

“The U.N.’s failure to behave rapidly to save lots of Syrian lives within the face of a humanitarian disaster is totally shameful and ought to be a stain on its conscience,” he mentioned.

Worldwide Rescue Committee head David Miliband instructed the U.S. broadcaster ABC that “the world has moved on” from the Syrian disaster.

“However the disaster has not been resolved, and a forgotten disaster is just not a resolved disaster,” he mentioned, including that the battle had left Syrians “on the sting” in order that when the pure catastrophe struck, they have been “pushed over the precipice.”

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Related Press writers Kareem Chehayeb and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.