“I live on a third floor and it seemed like it was breaking”: Syrian victims recount the terror suffered during the earthquake

A resident of the northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo who asked to be identified only by his first name, Sako, said that “many” buildings collapsed in the citycommercial capital of the Arab country, caused by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred at dawn with epicenter in Turkey.

“We were sleeping and suddenly the whole house began to shake, I live on a third floor and it seemed like it was breaking down. I ran out of bed, grabbed my family and we went to the car; We drove to the Villat area, where there is a wasteland with no buildings, and we stayed there all night,” she recounted.

In his escape, the man was able to verify that the buildings in his area had generally suffered slight damage, like his, but other areas of the city did not suffer the same fate. “Today I went through the Souq Al Hal and many buildings had collapsed, thank God we survived. In the streets you can see broken stones fallen from buildings,” the man explained, adding that three people he knew died in a building near his home.

“The earthquake took them, what can we do?”, lamented with the calm of someone who has lived through almost twelve years of war in Syria. Aleppo, capital of the province of the same name and one of the most populous cities in Syria, as well as an important commercial hub for the Arab country, was the scene of a long struggle between Syrian government forces and the rebels between 2012 and 2016, when it was retaken by Damascus.

During the peak of the conflict, the town was divided into two parts: one controlled by troops loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the other by the opposition, and was the scene of some of the bloodiest episodes of the war that began as a result of the popular revolts that broke out against Damascus in 2011.