In Türkiye, footage emerged late on Wednesday of a few more survivors being rescued, including Abdulalim Muaini, who was pulled from his collapsed home in Hatay, Türkiye where he had remained since Monday next to his deceased wife.
Rescue workers pulled an injured 60-year-old woman named Meral Nakir from the rubble of an apartment block in the city of Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, state broadcaster TRT showed in live coverage on Thursday.
The death toll in Türkiye jumped to 12,873 by Thursday morning. In Syria, already devastated by nearly 12 years of civil war, more than 3,000 people have died, according to the government and a rescue service in the rebel-held northwest.
In the devastated Syrian town of Jandaris, Ibrahim Khalil Menkaween walked in the rubble-strewn streets clutching a folded white body bag. He said he had lost seven members of his family including his wife and two of his brothers.
“I’m holding this bag for when they bring out my brother, and my brother’s young son, and both of their wives, so we can pack them in bags,” he said.
“The situation is very bad. And there is no aid.”
Aid officials hope to deliver aid into northwest Syria from Türkiye on Thursday, using a crossing that had been closed since the quake.
In Türkiye, many have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
Further slowing the relief effort, the main road into the Turkish city of Antakya was clogged with traffic as residents who had finally managed to find scarce gasoline sought to leave the disaster zone and aid trucks headed into the area.
At a gas station near the town of Kemalpasa, people picked through cardboard boxes of clothes dropped off as donations.
After facing criticism over the response, Erdogan said on a visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless.
The Turkish official told Reuters it was now too early to discuss elections given 15 per cent of Turks lived in the affected area. “At the moment there are very serious difficulties in holding an election on May 14,” as had been planned, he said.
Across a swathe of southern Türkiye, people have sought temporary shelter and food in freezing winter weather, and waited in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends might still lie buried.
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