In the days after the earthquakes, it was hard to tell which of the children here still had parents. Families and authorities in Turkey and Syria are still trying to figure out how many children have been orphaned by the quakes, and how to care for them.
JINDERIS, Syria — In the days after the earthquakes, it was hard to tell which of the children here still had parents. As local officials tried to match survivors with their mothers and fathers, they found they had never known some of the families at all.
More than a week removed from the disaster, with the death toll above 41,000, extended families and authorities on both sides of the Turkey-Syria border are still trying to figure out how many children have been orphaned, and how to care for them. They are spread across tents and hospital wards, sleeping in cars or in the apartments of the closest relatives they have left.
Local council officials milled about the town, leafing through handwritten forms for the names of families facing similar situations. “It’s been a nightmare,” said one of them, scanning the columns with his finger. “We just don’t know all these people. It’s good she had her relatives around her.” While Turkey is doing its best to track the number of new orphans — the government there said Friday that the families of 263 rescued children could not be reached — Syrian authorities face a more complex struggle. Figures collected in government-held areas will not be shared with those tallied in the rebel-held northwest, where nongovernmental organizations register their own figures but have few means to collate them.
Seventeen trucks loaded with aid entered northwestern Syria on Tuesday through the newly opened Bab al-Salam border crossing, according to the International Organization for Migration. The cargo included shelter materials, mattresses, blankets and carpets. He didn’t tell the boy that his parents were dead. “The psychologists told us to tell him early, because we don’t want him to have hopes,” he said. “We are waiting for him to recover physically, and then we’ll tell him.”
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