Shocked Aleppo residents desperate to find relatives under rubble

Residents of the war-torn city of Aleppo are in shock and facing a desperate situation as they shout names of loved ones to rescue workers who are trying to pull people out of the rubble.

Hundreds of people gathered around two collapsed buildings in the al-Masharika neighbourhood, shouting as the workers from Syria and Algeria pulled a body from a collapsed building.

Among them is Abdel-Razziq Helal, whose relative lived there. She was communicating via WhatsApp with her, until Wednesday.

"She is no longer responding. We hope that it is the phone battery that died, but she is still alive," Helal told dpa.

Workers were digging at the site of two five-storey adjacent buildings, with 25 apartments in total. Tens of bodies have been pulled out, said Mohamed Eissa, a member of the search team.

"We do not know if there are still bodies or even someone alive under this rubble," Eissa added.

Sadness is visible on everyone's faces as Syrian army personnel move debris with their hands and shovels because equipment can no longer be used due to the depth of the hole.

They are now searching for those who lived in the ground and basement floors.

The devastation is not limited to those from collapsed buildings. Many structures are still standing but are inhabitable.

"We do not know how we managed to get out of our home on Monday at dawn, but thank God we did alive," said Asaad Youssef who has been living at one of the emergency shelters set up at a school.

His building did not collapse, but a technical committee told them it is too dangerous to go back because of the cracks.

"So we took what we can carry from our apartment, and put it at one corner at the school," added, Youssef, who worked as a shop salesman in eastern Aleppo.

"We are facing a catastrophe that is worse than the days of war I have witnessed in Aleppo," said Suad, a woman in her 50s.

She says her family lost everything: all of their homes and many neighbours and relatives.

Now, "we do not know what to do," she said, since shelters are overcrowded.

Following the earthquakes, many Aleppo residents are living with relatives or in mosques, tents or schools. According to the United Nations, every third house in the city was destroyed by the earthquake.

The catastrophe hit a city already ravaged by the 12-year Syrian civil war. Authorities estimated that when the quake hit, there were already some 7,000 buildings cracked due to the war.

Aleppo is considered a symbol of the Syrian civil war. It was severely damaged in fierce fighting, as Syria's 2011 uprising soon evolved into a bloody civil war.

Most of it is now under the control of Bashar al-Assad's government.