ISTANBUL: I only remember going to sleep... When I woke up, everything was shattered. Osama Abdel Hamid said from a hospital in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. Osama's head was seriously injured. All his neighbors died. Thousands of people like Osama are standing in front of the earthquake that robbed them of even their beds in the middle of the miseries caused by the civil conflicts. Most of the Syrian cities along the Turkish border were destroyed.

More than 800 people were killed in Syria. According to the Ministry of Health, about 500 people were killed in the government-controlled area. White Helmets, a rescue organization, estimates that more than 300 people have died in rebel areas. But they say the death toll is much higher than this. The town of Sarmada in Idlib province, where hundreds of families were living in ramshackle buildings, has become a ghost land filled with rubble. Everything from solar panels and water tanks to beds are scattered all over the city. Rescue workers are peering for life among the giant layers of concrete.