Syria Turkey Earthquake: "For some people its the end of the world” - Rotherham councillor and wife raise funds for earthquake relief efforts

Liberal Democrat councillor Councillor Firas Miro, who represents Rother Vale at RMBC, says Syrian people were already struggling with the effects of the civil war before Monday’s 7.8 earthquake struck in the north of the country, and neighbouring Turkey.

Councillor Miro moved from his native Syria to study medicine at St Andrews University, graduating from Keele University before moving to Waverley last August to work at Rotherham Hospital as an acute medicine registrar.

Although it is difficult to verify casualties, Syria’s state media and a rescue groups say more than 2,500 people have been killed.

The Red Cross say the death toll is increasing by the hour as rescue teams search through the rubble of the hundreds of damaged buildings, across the Aleppo, Idlib, Lattakia, and Hamma governorates.

Coun Miro added that a friend had lost 40 members of their family in the earthquake – 19 were lost when a building collapsed.

He told the local democracy reporting service that relief efforts are struggling to get aid to where it is needed, as the Bab al–Hawa Border Crossing is the only UN approved route into Syria, and the roads have been affected.

“I’d certainly like to go if I can,” added Coun Miro.

“I think a lot of people are still in shock. You haven’t had time to process because the information keeps building.

“We can try and get money and equipment there, and try and transport it with us because it can be difficult to get things there anyway.”

His wife, Khoulod Ghanem, hopes to raise funds to the relief efforts through her company, Kids and Codes, which teaches youngsters across Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Europe and the Middle East coding and technology, in the hopes it will lead to better job prospects.

Mrs Ghanem will donate 50 per cent of fees raised to the relief efforts.

She confirmed that her parents in Damascus luckily ‘barely felt’ the earthquake, but added that the people of Syria were having to experience sorrow ‘again and again’.

“For some people, it’s the end of the world.

“I have been in the situation, eight years ago when I was in Syria, not because of the earthquake but because of the bombing, and because of the war, we had to get out of the house, and thought it was going to be destroyed.

“It was shocking, it was really shocking. Seeing something like that is not new, we have been through this, but the shock is why it’s happening again and again.

"I feel that there is no hope. For some people it’s the end of the world.

“I felt, in the past, that I had no power, no money, nothing to help.

“Now, with being here in the UK, and I’m a UK Citizen and I have Kids and Codes, I can help with money. I can help with my organisation.

“I can do a lot now.”

The Red Cross has launched the Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal to help the relief effort and to support those who have lost loved ones and, in many cases, have been left with nothing.