At 4 a.m. on Monday, when the earthquake hit, most of the 4.5 million people living in northwestern Syria were asleep. Thousands of buildings collapsed, burying their residents alive.
The majority of those living in this small corner of Syria had already been displaced from their homes in other parts of the country by the civil war. The northwest is the final stronghold of Syria’s opposition and is the main target of president Bashar al-Assad’s grim campaign to retake full control of the country. Before the earthquake, some two thirds of the area’s basic infrastructure – public housing, water and sanitation, hospitals and medical clinics, roadways and power generation – was already destroyed or damaged. The people living there could not have been more vulnerable. Nearly 2,000 bodies have been found in the five days after the earthquake, but tens of thousands are still missing.
You might have hoped that the international community’s response would be immediate; we have spent billions supporting Syria’s rebel groups, political opposition and civil society in this very area.
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