Syrians lament disaster after disaster in earthquake ravaged Jindayris
For five days, Faisal Baydoun and his family stood helpless in the freezing cold as the cries of their neighbours still buried under the rubble rang out.
Like thousands of others in the Syrian border town of Jindayris, they waited patiently for help to come, praying that the international community would rush to assist the recovery efforts with heavy machinery as their loved ones remained trapped, deep under crumpled buildings in this war-battered area.
Only now, 10 days after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake levelled large swathes of southern Turkey and northwest Syria, families such as his are receiving the help they crucially need to recover the living - and the dead - from under the debris.
"Everyone in Jindayris has lost people: whether they be family, relatives or friends," Baydoun told Middle East Eye.
"I have lost many people in this disaster."
The biggest earthquake to strike Turkey in eight decades also wreaked new devastation in northwest Syria, an impoverished region that provides the last pocket of sanctuary for the opposition that rose up against President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian government 12 years ago.
Before the quake, Syria's uprising-turned-civil war had already displaced half the country's pre-war population of 23 million. The Baydouns were among them, fleeing from their home in another part of the country for Jindayris four years ago.
Now the earthquake has caused a new wave of displacement, leaving them fearful for the future.