IN IMAGES, IN PICTURES

DAY

In the Syrian town of Jandairis, devastated by Monday's deadly earthquake, a distraught man cradles the lifeless body of his infant, repeating: “wake up my son”.

“Ya Allah , Ya Allah” (my God), sobbed the man, kissing his son's forehead. “He ripped my heart out,” he says. 

More than forty houses have collapsed like a house of cards in this border town of Turkey.

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The inhabitants try to remove the survivors from the rubble with their bare hands or using pickaxes, due to a lack of human and material rescue resources. 

“My whole family is under the rubble. My sons, my daughter, my son-in-law, there is no one to take them away,” breathes Ali Battal, traces of blood on his face.

“I hear their voices, they are alive, but there is no one to remove them,” continues this sixty-year-old man, his head covered with a woolen shawl to protect himself from the biting cold. 

The earthquake, whose epicenter is located in Turkey, occurred at dawn as a terrible storm blew through the region. The inhabitants, panicked, remained in the streets despite the cold, for fear of aftershocks.

“He is alive!”

In another street, civilians and fighters manage to extract from the ruins of a collapsed roof a man they thought was dead. “He's alive!” they cried when they noticed that he was breathing. 

A little further on, in front of a completely collapsed building, a young man carries his seven-year-old nephew in his arms. The boy and his sister made it out alive, but they lost their parents and three siblings.

“They no longer have a father or a mother,” sobbed the young man, in a state of shock, who had also lost his mother.

The wounded taken from the rubble were treated in the middle of the street or in private cars, the hospitals in the region being saturated.

According to an AFP photographer, 40 homes were destroyed in this locality alone, under the control of pro-rebel groups. Turks. 

The electric current is cut and the inhabitants are queuing in front of the only bakery still open.

According to the White Helmets, first aiders deployed in rebel areas in the northern Syria, the toll of the earthquake in these regions is nearly 400 dead.

“Our children, our women, our old people are under the rubble. It's a disaster”, launches Majed Nassari, who strikes his head in sign of despair.

He appeals to the “conscience of the world” to help his locality: “we will need at least one months, or even three, to be able to pull our dead from the rubble”.