Politics and class warfare taint Syria's earthquake response

Destruction mostly affected poor communities, even in regime areas

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  The brother of a survivor Gokhan Ugurlu, 35, who was pulled out of the rubble in Hatay, Turkey, reacts as a rescuer looks on. Reuters

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  A woman walks past flattened buildings in a street in Hatay province, Turkey. Reuters

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  A member of the army stands amid rubble in Kahramanmaras, Turkey. Reuters

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  A man reacts while sitting outside a tent of a temporary accommodation centre set up on a football pitch in Gaziantep, Turkey. Reuters

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  Earthquake survivors walk on a street in Hatay, Turkey. Reuters

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  A White Helmets volunteer holds a rescued cat in the rebel-held town of Jandaris, Syria. Reuters

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  A Syrian boy, who lost his family in the deadly earthquake, stands amid the rubble of his family home in Jindayris. AFP

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  Rescuers sit by a bonfire in Hatay, Turkey. AFP

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  A Turkish soldier walks among destroyed buildings in Hatay. AFP

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  Relatives of Palestinian doctor Yusuf Darabeh, who died when the earthquake hit Turkey, comfort each other. AP Photo

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  People stand by a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey. AP Photo

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  A child, injured in the earthquake, is treated at hospital in Bab Al Hawah, Syria. AP Photo

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  Vehicles containing aid from Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Syria border. Reuters

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  Rescuers carry Muhammed Alkanaas, 12, to an ambulance after five days under the rubble in Antakya, Turkey. AP

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  Romanian firefighters load a Turkey-bound train with emergency aid near Bucharest. AP

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  Collapsed buildings in Jandaris, Syria. Reuters

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  Abdulkerim Nano, 67, is rescued after five days under the rubble in in Kahramanmaras, Turkey

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  A Turkish rescue worker checks a collapsed building in Adiyaman. AP

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  Rescuers in Adiyaman, Turkey. AP

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  A resident in front of his collapsed building in the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras. AFP

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  Syrian refugees shelter in a public market in the Islahiye district of Gaziantep, Turkey. AP

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  A family wait for the bodies of their relatives to be recovered in Antakya, Turkey. AP

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  A woman plays with a sniffer dog in Antakya, Turkey. AP

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  Collapsed buildings in Antakya, Turkey. AP

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  A Syrian woman takes care of her nephew Hasan Goayid, eight, in Islahiye district, Gaziantep. AP

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  A Syrian child in a tent in the Islahiye district. AP

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  Collapsed buildings in the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras. AFP

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  Emirati rescuers sift through the rubble of a collapsed building in the regime-controlled town of Jableh, northwest of the Syrian capital. AFP

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  Volunteers at the Emirates Red Crescent 'Bridges of Goodness' campaign at the South Hall, Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City. Leslie Pableo for The National

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  Martin Griffiths, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, in Maras, Turkey. Reuters

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  Rescuers give water to a dog after a rescue operation in Hatay, southern Turkey. AP

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  A deadly earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6. EPA

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  Fissures from the earthquake have crumpled the highway near Islahiyeh in Southern Turkey. Matt Kynaston / The National

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  A Kurdish charity's aid convoy enters Syria through the Bab Al Salama crossing with Turkey, in the northern province of Aleppo. AFP

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  A rescuer with a sniffer dog searches in a destroyed building in Antakya, southern Turkey. AFP

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  A makeshift camp erected in a stadium in the city of Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey. EPA

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  A woman mourns Turkish Cypriot victims of the earthquake, during a funeral procession in the Turkish occupied area in north-east coastal city of Famagusta, Cyprus. AP

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  Rescuers carry survivor Rabia Ofkeli, 27, from the rubble in Hatay, southern Turkey. Reuters

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  Syrian President Bashar Al Assad visits Aleppo university hospital. Reuters

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  Members of the Swiss rescue team with a four-month-old girl, Abir, who was pulled out from the rubble in Antakya. AFP

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  Survivors at a hospital in Kahramanmaras, Turkey. Reuters

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  Members of the White Helmets during the fifth day of rescue operations in Jandaris, Syria. Reuters

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  Indonesian Muslims perform a prayer for the victims at Istiqlal grand mosque in Jakarta. EPA

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  Emergency personnel conduct a rescue operation to save Melda, 16, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, southern Turkey. AFP

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  The earthquake caused a railbed overpass to collapse in Nurdagi, Turkey. AFP

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  A framed picture on the cracked wall of a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, south-eastern Turkey. EPA

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  A coastal area of Iskenderun, Turkey, was flooded after the quake. Reuters

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  A sheet of paper lies among the rubble in Elbistan. AP

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  Relief supplies destined for earthquake survivors in Turkey, at a warehouse in Schoenefeld, near Berlin, Germany. AP

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  Rescuers search for survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, three days after the earthquake struck. AFP

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  Rescuers with a child pulled out from under the rubble. Reuters

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  Rescuers rest on top of rubble as an aircraft drops water over a fire at the port in the quake-stricken town of Iskenderun. Reuters

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  A rescue worker in Kahramanmaras, three days after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck south-east Turkey. AFP

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  People try to pull out a dog trapped beneath the rubble in Iskenderun, Turkey. Reuters

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  Lorries carrying humanitarian aid wait at Bab Al Hawa crossing on the Turkey-Syria border. Reuters

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  Syrians warm up by a fire outside a makeshift tent near the rebel-held town of Jindayris in Syria. AFP

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  A dam on the Orontes river in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province collapsed after the quake, flooding the neighbourhood. AFP

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  The sails of the Sydney Opera House lit with a black ribbon in remembrance and mourning of the earthquake victims. Getty

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  Smoke billows amid an expanse of collapsed and damaged buildings in Kahramanmaras, Turkey. Reuters

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  Dogs of the German International Search and Rescue team rest between operations in Kirikhan, Turkey. Reuters

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  White Helmets volunteers rescue a child trapped beneath the rubble in Jandaris, Syria. Reuters

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  People gather to collect food and humanitarian aid in the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras, south-east Turkey. EPA

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  The statue of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, is surrounded by damaged buildings in Adiyaman province. AP

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  A plane carrying humanitarian air sent for earthquake survivors lands in Damascus. Mahmoud Rida / The National

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  Motorway fractured by earthquake causes car crash near Kahramanmaras, Turkey. Matt Kynaston / The National

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  A tent camp has been set up at a stadium in south-eastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras to shelter families whose homes were destroyed in the quake. AFP

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  A displaced Syrian woman rests under a tree in a field on the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Jindayris. AFP

When the Aleppo high-rise apartment of Syrian civil engineer Abdulmoez Raouf shook from the earthquake across the border in Turkey this week he was confident the residents would be OK.

“The Soviets built it in the 1970s to house their advisers,” Mr Raouf said by phone from the southern middle-class Sheikh Saeed neighbourhood of the city.

After the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, Mr Raouf went to check on relatives in impoverished eastern parts of Aleppo, where he says most of the damage occurred.

Two days after the worst natural disaster in the Middle East in decades, a picture is emerging of its effects on Syrian regime territory, despite severely restricted media access.

President Bashar Al Assad's regime also restricts the movement of international organisations. Residents avoid giving information for fear of retribution.

The government has been saying the earthquake mainly affected Aleppo, Hama to the south, and other regime areas on the coast.

The disaster has also brought out disparities within communities perceived as loyal to Mr Al Assad and mainly comprising members of his Alawite sect.

Mr Raouf said buildings in eastern Aleppo were especially weak because the former rebel area was a main target of Russian and regime bombing in 2015.

The Russian intervention that year enabled forces loyal to Mr Al Assad to recapture Aleppo, Syria's second city, along with other parts of the country.

“The buildings that collapsed in the east were waiting to fall,” Mr Raouf said,

He said most of them had been built without a permit, or what is called in Syria “ashwaeiyat”: illegal structures lacking engineering standards.

Before 2011, around 60 per cent of all construction of Syria was ashwaeiyat.

An initial assessment of earthquake damage in regime areas by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs put the number of collapsed buildings in and around Aleppo at 40, and 53 in the coastal Latakia governorate. The organisation reported three collapsed buildings each in Hama and Tartous.

While the report pointed out damage to urban water reservoirs and cautioned that infrastructure could be affected, the destruction appears relatively modest compared with areas outside regime control to the north and west of Aleppo, especially in Idlib governorate, where Turkey holds sway.

In the rural centre of Jindayris, the opposition local council said 257 buildings had collapsed. The town, which is north of Aleppo, has a population of 100,000.

Mr Raouf said there did not seem to be much effort being put into rescuing people in eastern Aleppo.

“You might see the odd army bulldozer here and there with dozens of soldiers loitering around it,” he said.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry blamed US sanctions for what it described as a lack of equipment and medicine to deal with the earthquake.

While Idlib, Hama and Aleppo are stigmatised Sunni regions because many of their residents took part in the 2011 revolt, the governorates of Latakia and Tartous have large proportions of Alawites, who have been dealt an uneven hand by the disaster.

Leila, a kindergarten teacher in Latakia, said most of the damage in the city appears to have occurred in ashwaeiyat districts.

She moved a decade ago from a modest dwelling to a new residential property built by her wealthy husband.

“I hate to think what would have happened if we had stayed there,” she said.

Signs of discontent with the regime have emerged in outlying areas in the past few years, particularly among Alawites who have not seen windfall profits from the war economy, such as a multibillion dollar narcotics trade.

They have been hit by massive purchasing power decline, due to the collapse of the Syrian pound.

The currency is trading at 7,150 pounds to the dollar, the same rate as on Sunday, the day before the earthquake. But it was at 50 to the dollar on the eve of the outbreak of the conflict in March 2011.

A Facebook news page on Jableh, a coastal city south of Latakia, showed photos of Russian forces bringing in a crane to lift rubble from a collapsed building.

The Russian military is based in Hmeimim, on the outskirts of the city.

“What took them so long to get there?” one resident said of the pictures, in one of many expressions of anger in regime areas about slow relief efforts.

Across pro-regime social media channels, there were pictures of collapsed buildings on the coast with appeals for aid.

Jumaa Al Harer, another resident of Jableh, said the authorities had not yet dispatched any engineers to advise people whose dwellings remained standing on whether they could return inside.

The municipality, he said, is “only good at cleaning the streets when officials in their luxury cars come for visits”.

The earthquake killed at least 2,032 people across Syria. Sixty per cent of them were living in areas not under regime control.

An unemployed man in Latakia said deficiencies in the relief efforts were glaring, even in core regime areas.

He was fired from his government job last year for criticising the regime for not delivering on promises of reconstruction and economic revitalisation.

“There is no state in Syria,” he said. “The earthquake just made it more obvious.”