Volunteers have come from throughout Jandaris, Syria, to assist bury the a whole lot of useless after the earthquakes.

Jandaris, Syria – A whole lot of males had been transferring round in an open area in Jandaris, northwestern Syria. They appeared exhausting at work, lifting, calling out to one another, and carrying issues round.

Upon nearer inspection, the grim actuality was revealed: The sector was a cemetery which had not been a lot in use earlier than the devastating earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6.

Now, it had change into the positioning of mass graves, lengthy trenches dug to inter a whole lot of people that died within the quakes and their aftermath.

Males had been dashing forwards and backwards, unloading our bodies wrapped in shrouds or physique luggage from vehicles and passing them to others who had been digging trenches sufficiently big to accommodate 100 to 130 folks a day.

Some our bodies needed to be lifted and carried by two males. Many others had been tiny, clutched within the arms of males with shock written throughout their faces as they carried the infants over to the trenches.

Jihad Ahmed al-Ibrahimi, 21, was gathering cement breezeblocks, bringing them for use to line the trenches. The our bodies are laid on high of the breezeblocks, after which marble slabs are laid over high of the our bodies earlier than the trenches are stuffed in.

He had been coming day-after-day, to volunteer to assist with the burials.

“I reside within the camps in Aazaz, me and my household are displaced,” he instructed Al Jazeera, including that as a result of he and his household already lived in tents, they didn’t endure a lot earthquake injury.

“However to be sincere, we had been scared, it was horrifying. Then we began considering how far more horrifying it might have been for the individuals who reside within the cities. And we began to fret about our folks within the cities as a result of we knew that was the place many of the injury can be.

“We heard that the worst injury was in Jandaris, so, me and about 30 or 40 different males come out right here each morning to volunteer and assist the folks right here bury their useless right here on this cemetery.”

Al-Ibrahimi mentioned the boys use their very own automobiles to make the 40km (25 miles) journey to Jandaris within the morning and again once more to Aazaz at night time, not a simple job in a area the place 12 years of battle have decimated infrastructure and sources, a state of affairs solely made worse by the earthquakes.

The useless folks’s names are documented, as a lot as attainable, and small markers are erected close to the graves to point out the names of these buried there.

“We bury our bodies and carry out the funeral prayers for the useless,” al-Ibrahimi mentioned. “We’re not right here to receives a commission or something, we’re doing this for God.

“I’m so very grateful that almost all of my household and shut ones, we had been all already displaced and residing within the tent camps. However we’re right here, doing this work as a result of these individuals who died listed here are our households too, that’s what made us come out right here to assist.”