The toll continues to rise after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey on Monday morning. It now exceeds 9,500 dead. In Antakya, in the Hatay region, one of the most affected by the earthquake, many victims are still under the rubble waiting for help.
We reach the town when a man with a face covered in the blood gets into our car. Abdelkader leaves the hospital and wants to return as soon as possible to see the building under which he was still buried a few hours ago. “Our apartment collapsed,” he said. Me, I stayed in the rain for three hours and now I don’t remember anything. I don’t know where my family is. »
In the car, he repeats the horror: the brutal awakening, the shaking walls, the attempt to escape, and finally, the darkness under the rubble. Rescuers came to pull him out a few hours later. Abdelkader still can’t believe it. “Some destroyed apartments in my street were less than a year old. The way real estate developers have gone about it is not honest. They invested in bad hardware just to get rich. »
Very quickly, our car is blocked in traffic jams. You have to finish on foot. On the road, the inhabitants all hold the same speech: help is lacking, and the authorities have abandoned them. “Everyone says in the newspapers, ‘we are helping the Hatay region’, but that’s not true,” said a man. Nobody did anything, from the earthquake which took place yesterday at 4 am, until yesterday evening. They also say they are sending planes. But where are these planes? Nowhere. For two days, I have neither eaten nor drank water. Because nobody helps us. »