Hopes of finding more survivors dwindled on Friday in Turkey and Syria, a hundred hours after the violent earthquake that killed more than 21,700 people in one of the worst disasters in the region for a century.
Humanitarian aid is flowing into Turkey – Germany notably announced on Friday the sending of 90 tons of material by plane – but access to Syria at war, whose regime is under international sanctions, is much more complicated.
Almost all the humanitarian aid destined for the rebel areas is sent from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, the only one currently guaranteed by the UN. Turkish diplomacy says it is working to open two other crossing points “with the regions under government control” in Damascus, “for humanitarian reasons”.
The UN had indicated on Tuesday that the transport through this border post was disrupted due to damaged roads.
For his part, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced Thursday that he was “on his way to Syria”. The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, arrived the same day in Aleppo, Syria.