Rescuers in Aleppo, Syria's pre-war commercial hub battered by years of conflict, scoured for survivors in the biting winter cold Tuesday as residents buried their dead.
"I haven't been able to eat or drink," said Umm Ibrahim, 56, from the northern city, hit hard by the 7.8-magnitude pre-dawn quake that struck neighbouring Turkey.
"How could I, when my children are hungry underground?"
Soldiers, rescuers and residents of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood used pickaxes and shovels to free survivors trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings.
Umm Ibrahim was among dozens of families who had gathered near a flattened apartment block, searching for loved ones.
She had spent the night sleeping in a car nearby.
"I'm waiting for the rescuers to free my children... I will leave it to God," she said, running prayer beads through her fingers.
The region's worst earthquake in over a century has killed more than 6,200 people, at least 1,712 of them in Syria.
Aleppo, with at least 290 fatalities, has accounted for more than a quarter of all deaths in government-held areas, Syrian state media said.
More than 50 buildings had been flattened and around 126 shelters were set up in the city.
Ancient sites including Aleppo's Old City and its famed citadel were not spared damage.
- 'We looked everywhere' -
For many of Aleppo's residents, it was a sleepless night.
Many spent it in the rough, either in parks or streets, fearing new tremors or because they have lost their home in the quake.
Sitting beside a destroyed building, a young boy in torn flipflops and two men huddled over a fire to keep warm.
Even before the devastating quake, building collapses have been relatively common in the city, mainly due to war damage but also because of shoddy construction.
A former rebel stronghold, Aleppo witnessed brutal battles between rebels and regime forces before it was recaptured by government forces in 2016.
But for some residents, the misery caused by Monday's disaster was like nothing they had seen before.
"This earthquake is more crushing than the war," said Umm Mohammed who has been wandering through the city, desperately searching for her sister, a mother of four -- all of whom are missing.
"We looked everywhere, including in hospitals, we couldn't find them."
- Bodies in ice-cream trucks -
Shops closed along Aleppo's usually bustling streets, as excavators dug up rubble and rescuers yelled for survivors.
Mahmoud Ali was waiting to hear news of relatives still trapped beneath their flattened apartment block.
"I heard their phones ring when I called them, then nothing. Their battery must have died," he said, dark circles under his eyes attesting to a sleepless night.
"I hope they can hold on until the excavator gets here."
In Aleppo's new cemetery, an AFP correspondent saw men digging graves for quake victims.
Ice-cream trucks and minivans transported the bodies, which were then hastily buried, the correspondent said.
A family arrived at the cemetery with six dead relatives tucked inside plastic body bags. They lined them on the ground and recited a prayer before putting them in the ground.
Another group came with the bodies of eleven family members.
They asked the grave digger to reserve one more spot for a twelfth body -- that of a relative still under the rubble.
Quake imperils cross-border aid to Syria: UN
Geneva (AFP) Feb 7, 2023 -
The sole border crossing used to shuttle life-saving aid from Turkey into conflict-ravaged Syria has seen its operations disrupted by the deadly earthquake that struck the two countries, the UN said Tuesday.
The 7.8-magnitude quake and its aftershocks struck Turkey and Syria on Monday and killed more than 5,400 people.
"The cross-border operation has itself been impacted," Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
A spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said the Bab al-Hawa crossing itself is "actually intact".
"However, the road that is leading to the crossing has been damaged, and that's temporarily disrupted our ability to fully use it," Dujarric said.
Disaster agencies said several thousand buildings were flattened across an area plagued by war, insurgency, refugee crises and a recent cholera outbreak.
Concerns have been running particularly high for how aid might reach all those in need in Syria, devastated by more than a decade of civil war.
Humanitarian aid in rebel-held areas usually arrives through Turkey via a cross-border mechanism created in 2014 by a UN Security Council resolution.
But it is contested by Damascus and its ally Moscow, who see it as a violation of Syrian sovereignty.
Under pressure from Russia and China, the number of crossing points has been reduced over time from four to one.
And now areas surrounding that one border crossing have suffered significant infrastructure damage, while the aid workers on the ground have been hit by the catastrophe.
- 'Lives are at stake' -
"Every effort is being done to overcome these logistical hurdles, which are created by the earthquake," Laerke said.
"There is a window of about seven days" when survivors are generally found, Laerke said, adding that it was critical to get teams to those in immediate need as soon as possible.
"It is imperative that everybody sees it as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake," he said.
"Please don't politicise this. Let's get the aid out to the people who so desperately need it."
He said the UN was intent on using "any and all means to get to people, and that includes the cross-border operation and the cross-line operation from inside Syria".
But Laerke said access by road was a challenge and pointed out that the quake had impacted the UN's "own staff, our own contracting partners, our truck drivers that we work with, our national staff".
"They're looking for their families in the rubble... That has had an impact on that operation in the immediate," he acknowledged.
At the same time, he said, partners that deliver aid in northwestern Syria said they were "operational and they are asking for supplies, and they are also asking for funding".
For now though, the specific Syria cross-border humanitarian fund is empty, he warned.
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