JANDAIRIS: In the quake-devastated town of Jandairis in northern Syria, a dazed father cradles the body of his lifeless baby, saying over and over again: “Wake up, my boy, wake up.”

“Ya Allah, ya Allah,” he sobs, kissing the infant’s head. “They have torn my heart out.”

Dozens of homes in Jandairis crumpled like a house of cards in this town on the border with Turkiye when the earth began to shake on Monday morning.

Residents used their bare hands and pickaxes to search the rubble for survivors, as that was all they had to get the job done.

“My whole family is under there _ my sons, my daughter, my son-in-law...There’s no one else to get them out,” says Ali Battal, his face streaked with blood and head swathed in a wool shawl against the bitter cold. “I hear their voices. I know they’re alive but there’s no one to rescue them,” adds the man in his sixties.

Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake, with its epicentre in Turkiye’s south, came as a winter storm raged in the region.

‘He’s alive!’

In another street, civilians and fighters have managed to pull out from under a collapsed roof a man they thought was dead.

“He’s alive!” they cry when they see the man is still breathing.

Nearby, outside what was once a building, a young man in a state of shock holds his nephew in his arms.

He too is still alive, but the young man, named Samer Al Saraqbi, has lost 12 of his family members, including his mother, his sister and her family in the earthquake.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2023