"Everyone started running from their homes and shouting in the street"

Abdulbari is a 19 year old Syrian MSF patient. He tells us about the earthquake and the need for humanitarian assistance in his region.

10 February 2023

Contextual images of the impact of the earthquake taken on 7 February 2023. Idlib province, Northwestern Syria.
MSF does not necessarily operate in the locations depicted here.

Abdulbari is a 19-year-old Syrian MSF patient. He was the victim of a missile strike in 2015 and severely burned. He has been admitted in MSF Atmeh hospital, in Northwest Syria, and received care since then. He tells us about the earthquake and the needs for humanitarian assistance in his region. He lives thirty kilometers southwest of Idlib, in Jisr al-Shughour.

Abdulbari, a 19-year-old Syrian MSF patient.

"My name is Abdulbari and I live about thirty kilometers southwest of Idlib, Syria. But when the earthquakes happened, I was visiting my aunt who doesn't live very far from there. We were woken up in the middle of the night and everyone started running from their homes and shouting in the street. In this village, the houses are old and many have collapsed.

"We were woken up in the middle of the night and everyone started running from their homes and shouting in the street."

Contextual images of the impact of the earthquake taken on 7 February 2023.

Rescue teams arrived quickly and we started to help the victims under the rubble. Now people live on the streets, in tents or trees. They are poor and have no access to shelter. I also know that many children were rescued, but not their parents who remained under the rubble. I also heard the call that was made to able-bodied people, to help rescue in other areas. The civil defence is overwhelmed and cannot manage this alone. We need equipment, but we don't have anything yet."

"The civil defense is overwhelmed and cannot manage this alone."

In the last 48 hours, our team in Syria delivered 270 kits with non-food items including hygiene items, kitchen kits, winter kits and blankets, in Jandaris area, in the Afrin district, and in camps and shelter centres receiving people affected by the earthquakes in northern Aleppo.

Médecins Sans Frontières deployed an emergency response in northwestern Syria a few hours after the earthquake. Its teams were present and active in the field, as the association has been working in this area for more than 10 years. MSF also supports a network of more than 20 health centers in the region, from the north, near Turkish border, to the south of the city of Idlib.

MSF Teams and its partners took care of several thousand injured people and made donations of medical equipment to health centers and NFI to the populations.

&quot;Everyone started running from their homes and shouting in the street&quot;