By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

We supplicate to the Almighty Creator for His infinite mercy on the souls of the departed, we pray to Him for tracing those still alive beneath the debris, we beseech Him for the speedy recovery of the injured survivors, and we implore Him to grant patience to the bereaved families, for whom we express our heartfelt condolences as well.
The death count so far is in the mid thirty thousand but in view of the severity of the two earthquakes (7.8 & 7.5) that terribly jolted the joint border area of Turkey and Syria last Monday might (God forbid) rise to 50,000.
According to officials and medics, until last night, some thirty thousand people died in Turkey and around five thousand in Syria, while those affected number as many 26 million.
In Syria, which is under the illegal US sanctions that greatly hampers the efforts of the government and relief agencies, the UN says up to 5.3 million people may have been made homeless.
Washington’s ghoulish sadism and the inhuman thrill of the US regime at the sufferings of humanity, is an open secret. It is as morbid as the derision of the infamous French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, which mocked the quake by publishing caricatures of the collapsed buildings, with the caption: “No need to send tanks.”
It means the West would love to see Turkey and its flourishing towns and cities destroyed (even by invading neo Crusader armies), as has happened in Syria over the past decade – ironically because of the unwitting involvement of Ankara in facilitating the transit of the world’s most macabrely murderous terrorists towards Aleppo, Damascus and other places.
Now is the time for both Turkey and Syria to wake up and realize that the West is not their friend – neither the Arab reactionary regimes nor the illegal Zionist entity.
Moreover, natural disasters do not recognize the imaginary lines on the paper called political borders. When quakes, floods, famines, and epidemics occur, they sweep across the whole region. They do not differentiate between a Turk and a Syrian; or for that matter between an Arab and a Kurd.
Therefore, the most pressing issue for all concerned in the two countries ought to be the burying of the hatchet and sincere efforts to coordinate with each other as Muslims and human beings, rather than fan the flames of ethnic and political differences.
Peace, and indeed Divine Blessings are only possible to alleviate the pains and sufferings of the people of the entire region when terrorists are not provided safe zones, the national armies pulled back to well behind the common borders, and of course, the American occupiers kicked out from the region.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, which has rushed huge quantities of relief for the affected people of the two countries, seeks to facilitate friendship and fraternity between Turkey and Syria.