With a lump, Umm Esmat is preparing to receive the holy month of Ramadan , which begins on Thursday and will be heavy this year, after the earthquake caused severe damage to her house, and made her live overnight with her family in a tent in northern Syria .

"The month of Ramadan this year is different from the previous Ramadan and the year before," the woman told AFP, after she finished shopping with her daughter from a nearby shop in the town of Sheikh Hadid in the Afrin region in the northwestern countryside of Aleppo.

Inside a tent that has become her home since the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and neighboring Turkey on February 6, Umm Esmat is arranging the bags of rice, bulgur, oil, dates and sweets she has bought. She brings household utensils from her neighboring house that survived the aftermath of the earthquake.

"Ramadan this year is difficult for us because our spirits were broken and we are now living in a tent," she added, burningly, as she sat inside the tent, which was empty except for mattresses and a heater.

The earthquake severely damaged her house, some of whose walls collapsed and others cracked. She had no choice but to pitch a tent in front of the house, which is surrounded by olive trees.

The earthquake killed about six thousand people across Syria, causing widespread destruction in five Syrian governorates, especially those bordering Turkey. The earthquake worsened the living conditions of the population.

The month of Ramadan this year comes at a time when food needs in Syria are at their highest levels since the outbreak of the conflict 12 years ago, according to what the United Nations World Food Program announced last week. 12.9 million people are currently food insecure.

And the program warned last week that unless it gets additional funding, it will have to cut (aid) off 3.8 million people out of a total of eight million by July.

In a camp that was hastily set up after the earthquake occurred in the countryside of Jenderes, one of the areas most affected by the earthquake in northern Syria, Hilal Muhammad al-Safarjali sells chocolate bars, biscuits and sweets on a table that he placed between the tents, in order to secure his daily livelihood after losing his house due to the disaster.

The man, originally displaced from Damascus, told AFP, "I do not know how to say Happy New Year, and by God, we are not fine after the earthquake."

He added, "We are homeless and do not feel stable (...) We are not well at all, and we are not comfortable in the tents," stressing, "We have no helper but God."

In the same camp, Umm Jumaa mourns the month of Ramadan that comes to her, and she lost her husband, who was killed in the earthquake.

"The month of Ramadan comes without my husband," she told AFP. "It will be very difficult. We lost him, and he was the head of the house."