A week on, amid the tears of the bereaved and the abandoned, the unbearable scale of the death and destruction has become horrifyingly clear. At least 35,000 people have died as a result of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, making this one of the worst natural disasters of the century. Hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped under rubble, as relatives pray for their miraculous survival. The final death toll may never be known. Many millions are displaced and some communities have been almost razed from the face of the earth.
In such appalling circumstances, it seems inconceivable that whole areas in the disaster zone should be left to their fate. But as the United Nations’ top humanitarian relief official, Martin Griffiths, said on Sunday, this is in effect what has been allowed to happen in north-west Syria, which is controlled by groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. A negligible amount of humanitarian aid has reached Idlib province, through the only open border crossing from Turkey.
