Maarrat Misrine, Syria: In a hospital in earthquake-hit northwest Syria, eight-year-old Hanaa keeps asking for news of her family, unaware she is the sole survivor among her immediate relatives.
Her father, mother and four-year-old sister were among the nearly 40,000 people killed in the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6.
After years of war and displacement in Syria, the disaster orphaned many children when their families were lost under the rubble.
“She keeps asking for her father, her mother and her sister,” said Abdullah Sherif, Hanaa’s uncle, at Maarrat Misrine hospital in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province.
“We have not dared to tell her the truth yet.”
Hanaa was trapped for 33 hours under the rubble of her collapsed building in the border town of Harim, before she was pulled out and rushed to the hospital about 25 kilometres (15 miles) away.
When she got there, she was “in a critical condition”, her doctor Bassel Staif said. “She suffered severe dehydration, having been under the rubble without food or water and in the cold weather.”
Hanaa’s condition has since stabilised, and she sometimes smiles despite the injuries on her face.
But her left arm, which is in a cast, was crushed during the quake, Staif said, noting that his team is doing its best to save it.
“She has now left the intensive care unit, her condition is stable. But she is at risk of having an arm amputated.”
– ‘Trauma on top of trauma’ –
In the hospital room packed with Valentine’s Day balloons, Hanaa’s uncle remains by her side. But he fears her condition will only worsen when she learns of her family’s fate.
The little girl has only her grandparents and uncles to raise her in this rebel-held region, home to some four million people, many of them displaced from other parts of war-torn Syria.
Last week’s quake has affected more than seven million children, including 2.5 million in Syria alone, according to James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
