this is bbc news. the headlines. the number of dead from the earthquakes in turkey and syria, is now more than 30,000. but remarkably, survivors are still being pulled from the rubble. both the un and syria's voluntary group of rescuers known as the white helmets say the international community has failed people in the country's northwest, where thousands of people have died. the head of russia's wagner mercenary army claims his fighters have captured a village on the outskirts of bakhmut, a city they've been assaulting for months. politicians in the us say the military has shot down an undentified object above lake huron — the third such shoot down in many days.

officials haven't disclosed details about the object. now on bbc news, it's time for breaking the county lines. it's every parent's nightmare. he was climbing out the windows every night. they had him selling crack and heroin. young people lured into a world of drugs, gangs and violence. he was beaten badly. to see your child's face twice the size of what it should be, no mother should see. there are calls for a change in the law. to make it a specific offence to deal to children under 16. but are they criminals or victims? if children are being exploited and coerced, the law- would not criminalise them in those circumstances. - today we investigate what is being

done to break the county lines. it is something you might have read or heard about on the news, county lines is defined as grooming by criminals to force teenagers into drug dealing and other activity. drugs are often transported away from the big cities to smaller towns and rural areas by children and vulnerable people. the county line is the mobile phone used to take the orders. gemma has been looking at this and speaking to some of the families involved. what have they been saying to you? i have spent several months talking to charities and families about these children who are exploited and controlled by the county lines drug gangs. for example, in some cases when a child is talking to a social worker, gang members can listen in via the child's mobile phone. so, real control over who the child is talking to and what they are saying.

but i think the thing that really surprised me was just how quickly young people can get embroiled in this world of drugs and gangs, as this mum, speaking anonymously to us, can explain. he was a happy child, on the go, 100 miles per hour, cheeky chirpy, who went into year 11 and knuckled down. he was then ready to do his exams. until lockdown came in march. and then my whole world fell apart. lockdown, he was supposed to be in, wasn't in, was going out, coming home at all hours, wouldn't answer my calls. he had just been absent from the home, not telling me where he was, secretive, i suspected things were going on in the home, i would find little bits of weed

and little bags. he was arrested, which was the first time that the police came to the home. there were things in the house that i wasn't happy about. so, i did get rid of. he came back from the police station, asked me where these things were, and i said i'd put them in the skip. and the fear in his face was horrendous. it was alarm bells to me, something is not good. the police actually gave the debt for him because they searched his bedroom, they arrested him out and about, and take all the drugs of him, they then belonged to this perpetrator and they needed the money or the drugs back. he was beaten, badly. which is a trauma that he

is now living through. he came home and hid himself away. eventually he said, this is what you get by owing money. to see your child's face twice the size of what it should be, no mother should see. and that is when i asked for some help. didn't really get any help. a few weeks went by. i thought if he went into care, he would be looked after, safely. he was then placed in a contained flat in the middle of where he was being exploited from. no supervision. no protection, really. no money, you know, no benefits or anything. and was there for four months, five months.

when he was in there, did the exploitation continue? absolutely, yeah. he was still selling drugs. that is how he was funding living. i look back and i think, is it tough love, have i given him tough love, does he have to hit rock bottom before he got better? just one phone call to him and i said, stop doing what you're doing and come home. if you don't, stop phoning me. and he came home, two days later. so he was back home, but the repercussions have continued, haven't they? with the police and the cases against him, he should be treated as a victim, but that doesn't seem to be happening in the police respect. he has lost a couple ofjobs. he is suffering. he is not the boy of 11 or 12.

hopefully, we will get him back fully. a very powerful account there from that mum. lindsay dalton is the ceo of the charity pace, parents against child exploitation. today and might think that couldn't happen to them, what do you say? it could, unfortunately. our work at pace sees families affected by exploitation coming from every community and every background. so, how do you break that cycle? how do you stop kids becoming coerced by the drug gangs? it needs a multifaceted approach, and part of that needs a national strategy that looks at the laws that are needed to bring charges to those that are responsible for these crimes. that specifically make an offence of child criminal exploitation and the subsequent harms that come from that. so you say the law needs to change.

how does the law need to change? currently we are seeing it tacked on to other laws, drug laws and the fact that the exploitation may be a aggravating feature, what we need to see is child criminal exploitation is made a law within itself. and the subsequent harms, so for instance, concealment of drugs is a real issue and real factor that we see in county lines. by concealment we mean people are forcing, coercing or tricking children to insert drugs into their bodies to travel to different locations. forcing the drugs into their bodies? yeah. in some instances trick the children to do it themselves. in some instances we see offenders grooming and exploiting children, inserting them themselves. and it is difficult to prosecute those offenders because there

is no specific offence? the legal framework isn't there. it gives too many grey areas for these offences to be charged, and we don't need it to be an aggravating factor, we need it to be a stand—alone offence to give the consequences needed. well, we are going to hear from another mum now again speaking anonymously. she and her family were forced to move away from their home to escape the gangs. but what we are going to find out is that it was far from a perfect solution. we had to leave a private rented property due to benefit cuts, due to the benefit cap, and we ended up being moved to a very rough area in the town. had to go to a new school which is in the middle of two different gangs. a friend of his got stabbed while they were there, and because his friend used to be in a gang, they associated him with the gang and they sort of put like he was then associated so they wanted to stab him.

pre—teen at the time. and i think he just knew then that he had to make the choice of being on his own orjoining the gang for protection. i noticed his friends got a lot older, he was always going around with older lads, �*cause he's always been mature, but this was dramatically older. very difficult to know where he was, keep tabs on him. thejob i had, i went to bed early, i had other children, i thought, well done, he is going to bed, so early. and it turned out that he was actually climbing out the windows on a night. they had him selling crack and heroin. one of my children had come in and wanted to get their supper and they said that the big brother's friends were all in the kitchen and there was branches everywhere. i didn't understand at the time

but when i walked in there were some very tall older teens to early 20s, and there were stalks of skunk cannabis all over my kitchen. they had obviouslyjust cropped as they call it and they were bagging it up in my kitchen. sorting it all out. i know went in i was quite shocked. my reaction was, "what do you think you're doing?" how dare you? they all ignored me. nobody lifted an eyebrow. i thought that me cursing and my tone would have made them walk out, my son just looked and said, "don't start." and i had to back out of the room. and that's when i realised things were getting really bad. i was phoning social services, and i was finding weapons as well, machetes, knives, they were getting caught with knives at school, i was taking them to the police station.

i went to the police and said, "please arrest my son. "can you give me any advice? and they couldn't. they wouldn't put him in a cell. were you able to talk to other mums? not really, because you felt ashamed and embarrassed that you couldn't protect your children and that you couldn't stop what was going on. i tried my best, like i said, to get any outside help, different gang teams coming in, but all of them required my son to work with them, which he didn't want to do. how did you get him out? i was told i couldn't go into the nearby towns or cities because it was so easy to get there via one bus, so there would be no point, so i had to move miles away. the councils have got no understanding whatsoever. when i went down, i was told on more than one occasion to go back to where i come from. it is crucial that changes. if we have nowhere to go as families and nowhere

to take our children, far away, then we will never be able to break that chain and that bond between victim and gang. alison lowe is west yorkshire's deputy mayor for crime and policing. we saw there a family had to leave their home to escape the gangs, should that be happening? it sounds like in that case the gangs have won. it should not be happening. family should be able to live freely, securely, safely in west yorkshire. but we know unfortunately that crime and serious organised crime is rising, we know here in west yorkshire, like many other metropolitan places, county lines, the drug gangs, the organised crime groups are here, trying to take over our communities and we have to stop them. are there no—go areas, do you believe, in west yorkshire right now, areas where the drug gangs have taken over? i suspect that some people are feeling that. whether west yorkshire police would say that is

a different matter. we know that west yorkshire police have mapped 101 different serious organised crime areas, threats in west yorkshire, and we know that there are organised crime groups operating across leeds, bradford and kirklees, we know that because we have a programme precision which works across all our partners to map those threats, to disrupt those threats, we're winning, we are working together to support all of those different parts. really, you recokon the police are winning the war against the drug gangs? i think we are winning because we are taking millions of pounds of drugs out of the circulation, we are just in the last six months taking £1.5 million that we found from drug runners, we are using that money to invest back in our communities through the proceeds of crime.

we, the people of west yorkshire are winning, i believe, and we have to win, because otherwise the future is bleak. do you think young people who are coerced into joining county lines drug gangs should be criminalised? no, not at all. and there are mechanisms through the modern slavery legislation to protect young people who are being criminalised, so there is a national referral mechanism not being used, we need to do more to raise awareness of it. ijust wonder whether some families might feel in a case where drugs have been supplied by another young person, treating them as a victim rather than a criminal might suggest thatjustice hasn't been done. there are lots of children being exploited through fear, through violence, threats to their wider family members, who are doing terrible things that they would not do without those older crime members or cgs forcing them to do it. i don't think they should be criminalised for that. we know that from 2010,

youth services have been decimated, i was a councilor for many years, in leeds, the first thing we called was our youth services, so did every other local authority come out. we now have lots of academies which are brilliant in their selves, but they don't talk to the local authority, so it is much more difficult to bring those agencies together because they are part of the solution. some interesting points made there. we will be puttung some of those to the police minister who will hear from in a moment. thank you for speaking to us today. now, the story of kerry and tammy, our last two mothers in this programme. kerry's daughter died after taking drugs supplied to her by tammy's son. both are calling for politicians to take a closer look at the laws surrounding this, as richard edwards reports. it has been four years this year. but it still feels like it happened yesterday. flowers in the car park.

this is where 15—year—old leah heyes was found on saturday. police were called after reports a young woman had collapsed. two north yorkshire mums who built an unlikely friendship from a terrible tragedy. kerry roberts and tammy kirkwood campaigned side by side to raise awareness of the risk of drugs after tammy's son helped supply the mdma which killed kerry's daughter. carrie wants to see a new law. both want _ carrie wants to see a new law. both want to _ carrie wants to see a new law. both want to see — carrie wants to see a new law. both want to see better protection for the victims of county line gangs. most of the laws are not with the times, they were made 50, 60, 70 years ago when life is so much different. just set up for us the specific law change you want to see

through leah's law. what do you want to see? to make it a specific offence to deal to children under 16. it sounds really simple and it sounds like it could already be law but it is not. i don't think the politicians - understand what modern slavery is, i know they had a ten year plan but when you read it, - there is nothing in there i protecting our children that were being exploited. he talked about helping - the drug users and everybody else but he didn't talk- about protecting our children. we are in a crisis. we are living a crisis in the minute _ we are living a crisis in the minute. - as we are in the middle of that crisis financiallyl so are ourchildren, so are because even though mum and dad are saying they need help - from bills, they see their mum not getting the things that used to get. things are harder at home. so he is not thinking _ about the bigger picture of what's going on with our children. he has not said one word about drugs that i have listened _

to at all or exploitation. i met rishi sunak but since we met, i have had nothing back from him. kevin believes in the law and has took it his wing. he is not my mp, he is in a close by town, so can we have the support from rishi sunak? kerry roberts ending that report by richard edwards. the chair of the commission on young lives is a former children's commissioner for england. what needs to happen to prevent another tragedy like this? first and foremost, we need politicians, government ministers and the prime minister to see this as a national emergency, it is. we are looking at tens of thousands of children here who are falling through the gaps in services, who are being exploited by criminals in plain sight, in front of us in our cities, in our towns and around the country. families are desperate to get help, but there are so few places for them to go.

and it needs to have the laws behind it, the framework of law behind it in legislation. we really need government to be able to get behind to be able to get behind this, to accept that this is a national emergency, to get to the point where they are as agile and determined as the criminals are at the moment to exploit our children. are you saying that is not happening at the moment? there was a big strategy launched under borisjohnson? yes, he said he wanted to bite the heads of the county lines snake. it was boosted by the pandemic, cost of living crisis is adding to it, and we have a government that doesn't have either the leadership or the coordination about this. it is unclear which secretary of state is responsible for the protection of our children. it is unclear where this fits with government policy, and we don't have leadership from the top. i want the prime minister

to see what is happening, just as, actually, david cameron did with child sexual exportation nearly a decade ago. that is the level of intervention we need. why are so many kids being coerced into drug gangs right now? why is this happening? first of all, the drug gangs want them, they are commodities, they are cheap for them and they deliver a really important part of their business. they take all the risk, do all the running. we have seen that the age of kids involved in this is getting lower and lower. we found 13 and 14—year—olds managing the county lines now, notjust doing the dreadful work around it, but managing it. that is something that of course is part of a strategy by these ruthless criminals. first of all these people want them and are constantly recruiting, and then you have children who are often falling outside school, often vulnerable for different ways. theyjust don't have the protection around them. those services are stretched to their limits, they cannot

intervene to the level they need to support their families and support those children. should there be tougher punishments for those who deal drugs to under 16s? of course, there should be both tougher punishment and better support for those kids, we have to do this from both sides. we have to be tough on criminals that exploit children, it has to start — we have to change the scales. right now it is easy for the criminals to get children, we have to start fighting back and making it much more difficult. at the same time, we need to get to those kids and support and inspire them to stop it happening. thank you. well, i have been speaking to the policing minister, and i asked him that in many cases whether children who have been groomed into drug gangs should be treated as victims or criminals. well, i think it depends on the fact of the case but if someone

is — just to be very clear, if someone is aggressively coerced into carrying drugs, they will not be considered a criminal in that context. each case is looked at on individual merit. clearly, where children are being exploited and coerced, yeah, the law would not criminalise them in those circumstances. do you support leah's law, being proposed by north yorkshire mum kerry roberts, that would make it a specific offence to deal drugs to under 16s? well, supplying drugs to children, to people under 16, is a particularly heinous and despicable crime, i say that as a father myself. under the 2020 sentencing act, it is already an aggravating factor if the person being supplied drugs is a child, if they are under 16, and that means they will get a longer sentence for the person dealing drugs than if the person receiving drugs was over 16, that is in law already.

i know my colleague in parliament, kevin, has been raising this tragic case, so we're looking at it carefully butjust to reassure your viewers, under the sentencing act you already get a longer sentence because of the aggravating nature of supplying drugs to a child under the age of 16. we have heard alarming claims about young people transporting drugs in their bodies. do you think the people who force them to do that should face tougher sentences? that is an absolutely despicable form of abuse against children, absolutely disgusting, the worst possible form of exportation. ——exploitation. that is something i am definitely prepared to look at. clearly, if someone is convicted of doing this, it is a form of assault. what you have described would attract a severe sentence, it would be considered the most serious end of that kind of assault. but i want to make sure where people do this to children, they get the highest possible sentences.

i will take a look at that, and if we need to do more to make sure those sentences are as high as possible, we will. is the cost—of—living crisis playing a part when it comes to young people being recruited into drug gangs? no, i don't think so, i think the link between the economy and drug addiction or drug dealing isn't a particularly well established one. thankfully we have historically very low levels of unemployment, it is halved since the conservatives came to office, pretty much at a 50 year low. former children's commissioner clearly disagrees, she believes it is a factor. wider economic conditions in poverty are slightly different questions, obviously we are focused on getting people out of poverty, benefits are going up substantially in a couple of months�* time, the national minimum wage is going up as well, and we are very keen to make sure where children are at risk they are properly safeguarded. we are working with local authorities and with charities

to actively identify children who are at risk so they can be properly looked after. that is a really important element of this whole issue. that was the policing minister. well, gemma is here for a final thought. a hint perhaps that the government might be looking at a change of policy here. yes, clearly there is an agreement that county line drug gangs are something that need to be tackled. the question as ever is how, and it is something the government have strategies, they are spending millions of pounds in trying to tackle it, as we have heard. labour would have a different strategy and charities, as we heard, something more as well. but i think right now, if you are a parent and you are going through this, it still remains something that is very bewildering and very frightening. it is. thank you. of course, this is a huge issue which we will return to,

but if you are impacted by any of the subjects raised today and in need of support, you can find organisations which can offer advice at the bbc action line. you have been watching breaking the county lines, we are back next week, goodbye. hello. in some places, the clouds parted to give some sunday sunshine, but many other spots were stuck with grey skies overhead. we will see some breaks in the cloud overnight, but parts of east wales, the midlands and eastern england will stay pretty cloudy. quite murky as well for some of these eastern coasts.

we would see some big areas of clouds through northern ireland, southwest scotland. where there are some clear breaks, it could get cold enough for a touch of frost. place it it may drop down to around freezing. into tomorrow, we start off with lots of cloud. some mist and murk to through east wales, the midlands, into eastern parts of england. some of these eastern coast staying grey through the day, and we will keep some areas of cloud through the irish sea, going into northern ireland, western scotland. but, for many other spots we will see more in the way of sunshine, a brighter day in prospect. feeling mild as well, 9—12 degrees. tuesday, another mainly dry day but for wednesday onwards there will be some rain at times. it does stay mild, though — in the south, we could see 15 or 16 degrees.

hello and welcome to bbc world news. the number of dead from the earthquakes in turkey and syria is now more than 30,000. united nations aid vehicles have now begun arriving in syria, but the head of the un's relief mission says many people have a right to feel abandoned. part of the problem is that rebel groups still control parts of the northwest, following years of civil war. 0ur middle east correspondent, quentin sommerville, and cameraman robbie wright, report from inside the rebel—held area.

a border and a catastrophe shared, but in the earthquake�*s aftermath,