(AFP) - Several children were rescued on Friday, but the hope of finding other survivors in Syria and Turkey is waning, five days after the devastating earthquake that killed about 23,000 people in one of the worst disasters in this region in a century, while Damascus agreed. To deliver international aid to the affected and out-of-control areas.

And the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned Friday that the earthquake may have displaced 5.3 million people in Syria. "This is a huge figure for a people who are already suffering from mass exodus," said the UNHCR representative in Syria, Sivanka Dhanapala, during a press conference held in Geneva, in which he participated from Damascus.

Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Syria to facilitate the delivery of aid to the earthquake victims.

International humanitarian aid is flowing to Turkey, and Germany announced Friday that it would send 90 tons of materials by air, but reaching Syria, whose regime is subject to international sanctions, is much more complicated.

Humanitarian aid destined for northwestern Syria is usually transported from Turkey through Bab al-Hawa, the only crossing point guaranteed by a Security Council resolution on cross-border aid. However, the roads leading to the crossing were damaged by the earthquake, which temporarily affected the ability of the United Nations to use it.

On Friday, the Syrian government agreed to deliver humanitarian aid to areas outside its control in the north of the country, according to the official Syrian Information Agency (SANA).

The Council of Ministers announced in a statement after an extraordinary session that "the supervision of the International Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent over the distribution of this aid, with the help of United Nations organizations, will ensure that it reaches those who deserve it."

The United Nations World Food Program requested $77 million to help the 874,000 people affected by the earthquake.
On both sides of the border, thousands of homes have collapsed. Rescue and relief teams are intensifying efforts in search of survivors, despite the passage of the vital first 72 hours, while frost exacerbates the difficulties of the situation.

Nevertheless, on Friday, the six-year-old Musa Hamidi was pulled out alive, in a state of shock, and injured in the face, amid cheers from under the rubble in the town of Jenderes, northwestern Syria, according to an AFP correspondent.
Two other people were also rescued in the town of Jableh in Latakia Governorate.

In Antakya in southern Turkey, Friday rescue crews managed, after "105 hours" of the earthquake, to pull out the 18-month-old infant Yusef Hussein from the wreckage of a three-storey building, then his brother Muhammad Hussein was pulled out twenty minutes later, according to the "NT" channel. in".

Two hours earlier, Zeynep Ela Parlak, a three-year-old girl, was pulled out of this quake-ravaged city.

The situation was exacerbated by the severe cold, to the extent that the PKK decided on Friday "not to carry out any operation as long as the Turkish state does not attack us," according to what was reported by the Firat Agency, which is close to it, according to the official in the party, Jamil Bayik. He said, "Thousands of our children are still under the rubble. (...) Everyone must mobilize all their capabilities."

Many survivors criticized the Turkish government's slow response. "I did not see anyone before 14:00 on the day after the earthquake," Mehmet Yildirim said angrily, 34 hours after the first earthquake, explaining that "there is no state, no police, no soldiers. Shame on you, you left us alone."

For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged the existence of "gaps" in the government's handling of the disaster. During his visit to the severely damaged city of Adiyaman (south), he said, "The destruction affected many buildings (...) to the extent that, unfortunately, we were not able to intervene quickly enough."

Meanwhile, the first bodies of Turkish Cypriot victims of the earthquake in Turkey began arriving in northern Cyprus on Friday, including seven teenage volleyball players who were participating in a tournament there, local television reported.

The bodies were recovered from the rubble of a hotel in Adiyaman that had completely collapsed in the earthquake. The hotel housed 24 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 14 and accompanying adults, who came from the self-proclaimed "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", which is only recognized by Turkey.

According to the Turkish "NTV" channel, "the bodies of 19 teenagers (from the team) were found under the rubble."

According to the latest official figures, the 7.8-magnitude earthquake has so far killed at least 22,765 people, 19,388 of them in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria.

Humanitarian organizations, in particular, fear the spread of the cholera epidemic, which reappeared some time ago in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, visited victims in Aleppo for the first time since the earthquake, according to the presidency.

On Friday, a second aid convoy from the United Nations entered the areas outside the control of Damascus in northwestern Syria, five days after the devastating earthquake occurred, while the "White Helmets" organization described the slow entry of aid and its insignificance as a "crime."
The organization, which is the civil defense in areas outside the control of Damascus, criticized the meager aid sent by the United Nations, which does not include equipment for search and rescue teams.

"The United Nations must apologize to the Syrian people and explain the reason for this shortcoming," Raed al-Saleh, head of the organization, told AFP, noting that the priority lies in providing "shelter, heating, relief materials, personal hygiene items and clean water."

On Friday, the Algerian government decided to provide financial aid worth $45 million to Turkey and Syria, according to a government statement.

A number of United Nations representatives pointed out that the aid stocks that the organization had in Syria before the earthquake began to run out quickly and needed rapid resupply.

The Regional Director of the World Food Program in the Middle East, Corinne Fleischer, explained that the organization has stocks in northwestern Syria containing ready-made food rations sufficient for 125,000 people, in addition to rations that require cooking that can feed 1.4 million people for a month.

"We have been distributing aid since day one," said UNHCR representative in Syria Sivanka Dhanapala, adding in a video from Damascus, "a large part of it has been distributed and supplies must be replenished as soon as possible."

"We also plan for what will happen in four, eight or 12 weeks," he added.

He also said, "When we think about eight to 12 weeks, we talk about helping to find jobs and restoring basic services in the affected areas."

The ambassadors of Switzerland and Brazil announced on Friday that the UN Security Council will meet to discuss the humanitarian situation in Syria after assessing the needs, while calls continue to expedite the opening of additional border crossings with Turkey to deliver aid.