Helping Syrians without supporting Bashar al-Assad, the donors’ challenge

A week following the disaster, Civil Defense rescue workers announced a week of mourning, across the Idlib region, to commemorate the dead and all the missing. A flag of the White Helmets replaces that of free Syria and testifies to the action of the rescuers day following day to find survivors and pull them out from under the rubble. “Day and night, we took turns trying to find people. We had never faced such a disaster. It is well beyond the bombardments of the Syrian and Russian air force. We all had relatives, friends, neighbors under the rubble and we felt so helpless to help them,” says Farouq, a rescuer at Atarib.