The death toll from Monday's 7.8-magnitude quake is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts pass the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday conceded "shortcomings" after criticism of his government's response to the earthquake, one of the deadliest this century.
Survivors have been left to scramble for food and shelter -- and in some cases watch helplessly as their relatives called for rescue, and eventually went silent under the debris.
"My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law's sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life," said Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey's Hatay province.
"We can't reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding... We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now," she said.
Still, rescuers kept pulling survivors from the debris as the death toll continued to rise.
As criticism mounted online, Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit spots, the quake's epicentre Kahramanmaras, and acknowledged problems in the response.
"Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It's not possible to be ready for a disaster like this," he said.
Twitter access returned on Thursday morning after the social network did not work on Turkish mobile networks for several hours Wednesday, according to AFP journalists and the NetBlocks web monitoring group.
Turkish officials had held talks with Twitter leaders after which deputy infrastructure minister Omer Fatih Sayan tweeted Thursday that Turkey expected the social network to cooperate more in the "fight against disinformation".
- Children saved -
Temperatures plunged to minus-five degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) in Gaziantep early Thursday, but the cold did not stop thousands of families from spending the night in cars and makeshift tents, too scared to stay in their homes or prohibited from returning to them.
Parents walked the streets of the southeastern Turkish city -- close to the epicentre of the earthquake -- carrying their children in blankets because it was warmer than sitting in a tent.
"When we sit down, it is painful, and I fear for anyone who is trapped under the rubble in this," said Melek Halici, who wrapped her two-year-old daughter in a blanket as they watched rescuers working late into Wednesday night.
Officials and medics said 12,873 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,162 in neighbouring Syria from Monday's quake, bringing the total to 16,035. Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply.
In Brussels, the EU is planning a donor conference in March to mobilise international aid for Syria and Turkey.
"We are now racing against the clock to save lives together," EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.
"No one should be left alone when a tragedy like this hits a people," she said.
- 'People dying every second' -
Due to the scale of the damage and the lack of help coming to certain areas, survivors said they felt alone in responding to the disaster.
"Even the buildings that haven't collapsed were severely damaged. There are now more people under the rubble than those above it," Hassan, who did not provide his full name, said in his rebel-held Syrian town of Jindayris.
"There are around 400-500 people trapped under each collapsed building, with only 10 people trying to pull them out. And there is no machinery," he added.
The White Helmets, leading efforts to rescue people buried under rubble in rebel-held areas of Syria, have appealed for international help in their "race against time".
They have been toiling since the quake to pull survivors out from under the debris of dozens of flattened buildings in northwestern areas of war-torn Syria that remain outside the government's control.
A leading UN official called for the facilitation of aid access to rebel-held areas in the northwest, warning that relief stocks will soon be depleted.
"Put politics aside and let us do our humanitarian work," the UN's resident Syria coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told AFP in an interview.
- Syria appeals for EU help -
The issue of aid to Syria is a delicate one, and the sanctioned government in Damascus made an official plea to the EU for help, the bloc's commissioner for crisis management Janez Lenarcic said.
A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages.
The European Commission is "encouraging" EU member countries to respond to Syria's request for medical supplies and food, while monitoring to ensure that any aid "is not diverted" by President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lenarcic noted.
Dozens of nations, including the United States, China and the Gulf States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived.
The EU was swift to dispatch rescue teams to Turkey, but it initially offered only minimal assistance to Syria because of EU sanctions imposed since 2011 on Assad's government over its brutal crackdown on protesters that spiralled into a civil war.
The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world's most active earthquake zones.
Monday's quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.
In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.
What we know about the Turkey and Syria earthquake
Paris (AFP) Feb 9, 2023 -
A strong earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria in the early hours of Monday, devastating cities and killing and injuring thousands.
Here's what we know about the disaster so far:
- When and where -
The first 7.8 magnitude quake occurred at 04:17 am (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 18 kilometres (11 miles) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to around two million people, the US Geological Survey said.
It was followed by a slightly smaller 7.5 magnitude tremor and many aftershocks.
The quakes devastated entire sections of major cities in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria.
The region also hosts millions of people who have fled the civil war in Syria and other conflicts.
- Casualties -
More than 15,000 people have been killed and thousands more injured as efforts continue for a third day in freezing conditions to save those still trapped under rubble.
Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and 2,992 in Syria, bringing the total to 15,383.
Initial rescue efforts were hampered by a winter storm that covered major roads in ice and snow and left three key airports in the area inoperable, complicating deliveries of vital aid.
However, survivors are still being pulled from collapsed buildings.
- Destruction -
Some of the heaviest devastation occurred near the quake's epicentre between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, where entire city blocks lay in ruins.
Turkey said almost 3,000 buildings had collapsed in seven different provinces, including public hospitals.
A famous mosque dating back to the 13th century partially collapsed in the province of Maltaya, where a 14-story building with 28 apartments that housed 92 people collapsed.
Social media posts showed a 2,200-year-old hilltop castle built by Roman armies in Gaziantep lying in ruins, its walls partially turned to rubble.
In Syria, the health ministry reported damage across the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, where Russia is leasing a naval facility.
The UN's cultural body UNESCO warned that two sites on its World Heritage List, the old city of Syria's Aleppo and the fortress in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, had sustained damage and that several others may also have been hit.
It noted that the quake occurred in one of the longest continuously inhabited areas on the planet within the so-called Fertile Crescent, which has witnessed the emergence of different civilisations from the Hittites to the Ottomans.
Even before the tragedy, buildings in Aleppo often toppled due to poor infrastructure and many are dilapidated after more than a decade of war.
- International aid -
Condolences and offers of aid have poured in, including from the European Union, the United Nations, NATO, Washington, China and Russia.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc is planning to host a donor conference in March.
President Joe Biden promised his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States will send "any and all" aid needed.
But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington would work with partners to provide aid in Syria and not the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is under Western sanctions over alleged humanitarian abuses during his country's nearly 12-year civil war.
Syria, which has only been offered minimal assistance because of the sanctions, on Wednesday made an official plea to the EU for help.
The UN's resident Syria coordinator, El-Mostafa Benlamlih, called for the facilitation of aid access to rebel-held areas in Syria's northwest, warning that relief stocks will soon be depleted.
The European Commission is "encouraging" EU member countries to respond to Syria's request for medical supplies and food, said the commissioner, Janez Lenarcic.
The World Health Organization said up to 23 million people could be affected by the earthquake and promised long-term assistance.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 77 national and 13 international emergency medical teams were deploying to the affected areas.
Turkish hospital car park becomes makeshift morgue after quake
Antakya, Turkey (AFP) Feb 9, 2023 -
Rania Zaboubi scours body bags laid out in the car park of a hospital in southern Turkey in search of her uncle who went missing after Monday's massive earthquake.
"We found my aunt, but not my uncle," she says in a choked voice.
The Syrian refugee says she lost eight members of her family in the tragedy that has so far claimed the lives of at least 16,000 people in Turkey and neighbouring Syria.
In the parking lot of the main hospital in Antakya, a large city in Turkey's Hatay province, other survivors were also going from corpse to corpse looking for people they knew.
AFP journalists counted nearly 200 bodies, arranged on either side of tents, on Wednesday evening.
At least 3,356 people died in Hatay, more than a quarter of the dead in Turkey so far reported.
Faced with the magnitude of the disaster, there is not enough space in the vast parking lot. With nowhere else to put them, seven bodies were laid at the foot of a container overflowing with waste.
The hospital has huge cracks along one side. It is still standing, but authorities have decided to evacuate it.
The interior of the building has also been damaged, making it impossible to receive patients, alive or dead.
- Anonymous bodies -
Patients are treated in red and white tents, and are classified in three colours according to the severity of their injuries.
Many were transported by helicopter to hospitals that withstood the tremors, with many going to Adana.
The dead, however, are stranded on the cold asphalt.
How many have been brought there since Monday? "Too many," says Yigitcan Kayserili, a volunteer from Ankara. "Maybe 400, maybe 600."
Kayserili helps families find their dead while also providing psychological support. He has not slept for two days.
In the parking lot, the comings and goings are incessant.
To his right, a man and his son, a curly-haired teenager, lift a body and then move on, showing little emotion.
Behind them, a man slowly drives an old blue sedan. He too has found the body he was looking for, which is lying on the back seat in a black bag. The left door is open to allow the corpse's legs to stick out.
A long white truck is parked nearby. Unlike many other vehicles on the road to Antakya, it is not being used to haul aid. Instead, it is transporting unidentified bodies.
"About 70 percent of the bodies here are anonymous," says Kayserili.
Those not recovered after 24 hours are loaded into the truck to end up in mass graves.
"We can put 50 bodies inside," says Kayserili. "We could put more, but we don't want to stack them."
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