A month has gone by since, ”at 4.15 local time”, Giacomo Pizzi, collaborator of the Pro Terra Sancta Association, was awakened by “a very strong shock that lasted an eternity” while he was in Aleppo, the Syrian city heavily bombed in 2016 and then collapsed after the terrible earthquake of February 6. Since then, from the Franciscan convent of Azizieh in the center of Aleppo, he has continued to stay close to the displaced, ”almost a million in total” he says in Adnkronos.
After having started ”a reception activity”, continued with ”the soup kitchen” and increased food rations ”because after the earthquake, with electricity and heating, there was also a lack of gas for cooking’ ‘, Pizzi has now passed the baton on the field. And, he explains, ” phase two begins tomorrow ”. The one that will see ”a team of four engineers arriving in Syria who will leave Italy”, some of whom are ”former civil protection representatives”. Their task ”for the next two weeks” will be to ”reconnoiter the damaged apartments in Aleppo and Latakia to see who can return to their homes”. It is estimated, he explains, that ”between 30 and 40 percent of homes are damaged beyond repair”.
Pizzi explains that there are ”five thousand displaced persons who reside in the Pro Terra Sancta structures linked to the convents between Aleppo and Latakia”. Added to these are ”another three thousand people to whom we provide assistance with food, blankets and other basic necessities”. But it’s not over. ”People still live on the streets, dislocated, we are trying to understand the extent of this emergency. There are almost a million displaced people in general and many, a month after the earthquake, don’t know who to contact”. Once an estimate of the damage has been compiled by the engineers, ”who have experience of earthquakes in Italy, they will proceed with the collection of funds” aimed at the ”reconstruction”. Furthermore, adds Pizzi, it will be necessary to proceed with a ”recognition of the needs of people who now still sleep in cars or in makeshift tents”.
A special thought goes to the little ones, ”in Aleppo we are talking about ten thousand children, many of whom are children of war. They have never had psychological assistance regarding the consequences of the conflict and now they have traumas linked to the earthquake”. For them, explains Pizzi, we are thinking of ”interventions that aim at the psychological support of children” and which Pro Terra Sancta plans to carry out ”in collaboration with Caritas and Unicef”. For them too, the organization makes ”an appeal to the Italian institutions, to the authorities, to politics. Because in addition to the humanitarian aid that has arrived, what would be needed now would be a suspension of the sanctions”.
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