After Monday’s earthquake brought down his family’s building in Syria’s battle-scarred second city of Aleppo, Youssef managed to reach one of his trapped relatives by phone, hearing voices despite a bad line.
Since then, the 25-year-old has been standing in near-freezing weather by the rubble, unable to get through again.
“I have been waiting for news of my father, my mother, my brother, my sister and her son.
“Nothing is known about them so far,” he said.
“I talked to them and heard their voices, but unfortunately, as you can see here, they’re very slow at work and they don’t have enough equipment,” he said of rescue efforts.
On the streets, men, women and children wrapped in blankets huddled on pavements around fires on Wednesday morning.
Many slept in cars and vans parked near where their homes once stood.
Others lay on the cold ground. Aleppo, once famed for its labyrinthine covered souks, mediaeval minarets, domed bathhouses and imposing ancient citadel, was devastated by years of civil war before the government recaptured a rebel stronghold there in 2016.
It is among the Syrian cities worst hit by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has killed more than 11 000 people across Türkiye and Syria.
Authorities said on Friday that at least 390 people had died and 750 were injured in Aleppo province, with more than 50 buildings having collapsed.
Many Aleppo buildings had been weakened by battles during the 12-year conflict, and Youssef’s apartment was in Bustan al-Basha, a former front-line district that was badly damaged in the fighting.
The quake has also caused further damage to the pride of the city: the towering citadel listed by the UN cultural agency, Unesco, as a world heritage site.
It had sustained heavy damage during the civil war and the earthquake reduced some of the surviving structures inside it to rubble.
For Aleppo’s citizens, gradually rebuilding their shattered city, years after the fighting there stopped, the earthquake brought new misery.
At al-Razi Hospital, 27-year-old Bakr said he was one of only three survivors when his building caved in, killing his parents, brother and six of his nieces and nephews.
“The building collapsed on top of us,” he said, lying injured in a hospital bed.
Rescue workers on both sides of the country’s front lines say more than a decade of war has drained them of resources and they require massive aid and heavy equipment to facilitate search-and-rescue operations.
Syria’s government has received help from a host of Arab countries including Egypt and Iraq, as well as from its key ally Russia, which has sent rescue teams and deployed forces in Syria to join relief work, including in Aleppo.
Little, if any, aid has made its way to the insurgent-held north-west.
In Türkiye, grieving families stepped over hundreds of bodies in stadiums and parking lots, carefully lifting blankets from their faces to try to identify dead relatives after the once-in-a-generation earthquake devastated the region.
Nada, a Syrian woman, and her Turkish husband asked a staff member how best to find their niece and aunt among the more than 100 bodies lined up in the parking lot of the Hatay Research Hospital near the southern city of Antakya.
“Check one by one,” they were told.
Many of those killed in the tremor were wrapped in body bags, blankets or tarpaulin, awaiting relatives or friends to find them and take them from the field hospital.
They were placed in tents or on the pavement outside the 1 130-bed hospital, built in 2016, which was too damaged by the earthquake to house them.
Some had tags with identifying information, some did not.
Relatives who locate loved ones are issued a death certificate and burial permission from the on-site prosecutor, then they remove them in their own vehicles.
One woman who could not find her sister yelled: “My God, look how we are.
“We will be thankful if we find dead bodies of our people.”
Erdem, 36, an emergency health worker who came from Izmir in the west, said a lack of mortuaries was one problem and co-ordinators were awaiting a refrigerated truck to store the bodies.
To the north in Kahramanmaras, near the earthquake epicentre, at least another 100 bodies were assembled on the floor of an athletics stadium, where residents sought to identify them.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has acknowledged problems with the initial response to the earthquake but said normal operations had resumed. He said the death toll in the country had risen to 8 574.
Erdogan made his first visit to the devastated region since Monday.
Speaking to reporters in the Kahramanmaras province, he said there had been problems with roads and airports but that everything would get better by the day.
“On the first day we experienced some issues but then on the second day and today, the situation is under control,” he said.
The government aimed to build housing within one year for those left without a home in the 10 provinces affected, he added.
The initial tremor, the most destructive in decades, wrought havoc on hospitals, airports and roads, and knocked down more than 6 400 buildings in Türkiye.
Many residents have complained about insufficient resources and slow emergency response.
Erdogan said citizens should heed communication from authorities and ignore “provocateurs”.
Cape Times