In the days after the earthquakes, it was hard to tell which of the children here had parents. As officials tried to match survivors with their mothers and fathers, they found they had never known some of the families.
After 12 years of civil war, this pocket of north-west Syria is home to millions of people from across the country, their names and histories often obscured by displacement and isolation. As aid workers scoured hospitals for the missing, families hoped and prayed.
“We couldn’t check on databases, we couldn’t check on lists,” said Nour Agha, a relief worker in the shattered town of Jinderis. “Some of the children couldn’t even tell us their names, they were
