By Khalil Ashawi

JANDARIS, Syria (Reuters) – Two of Naser al-Wakaa’s kids had been pulled alive from the rubble of their house within the Syrian city of Jandaris after Monday’s earthquake, showing on video as rescuers reached them within the darkness of evening, bruised and lined in mud.

One other of his kids had additionally survived. However as Wakaa sat within the ruins, amid concrete blocks and twisted metallic, he wailed for his spouse and different lifeless kids, cradling child garments to his face.

Within the confusion of his grief, it was not clear from Wakaa’s account what number of kids he had misplaced, however among the many names he listed for his lifeless kids had been these of three boys and three women.

“Bilal, oh Bilal,” he cried.

Wakaa recalled the second the earthquake hit – very totally different to the air strikes, rockets and barrel bombs he mentioned they’d survived throughout Syria’s ongoing civil struggle.

“I ran out of the home and mentioned ‘please God, let one survive. I simply need one among my children’,” he mentioned.

The catastrophe has killed greater than 21,000 individuals, largely in Turkey, but in addition together with greater than 3,000 in Syria, of which two thirds had been in rebel-held areas of the northwest.

Jandaris, simply throughout the border from Turkey, suffered huge injury with many homes razed and others partially collapsed. Mechanical diggers, rescue employees and odd individuals who escaped harm have spent days attempting to tug out remaining survivors.

A U.N. company mentioned 14 support vehicles had crossed into northwest Syria on Friday, the primary exterior humanitarian help to achieve a area held by rebels combating the Damascus authorities and among the many areas worst affected by Monday’s earthquake.

After the quake, Wakaa had known as for a number of of his sons, Faisal, Meshal, Mohsin and Mansour, and was reassured by neighbours. However then he discovered that Faisal and Mohsin had each perished, already lifeless when the rescuers reached them.

He held a scrap of paper displaying writing by his eldest daughter Heba, discovered lifeless holding in her lap the physique of her little sister Israa. Their different sister, Samiha, was discovered lifeless close by.

Later, as a crowd gathered on the cemetery, he watched as gravediggers lowered the physique of one among his kids, shrouded in white, right into a communal grave the place a number of different victims of the catastrophe already lay.