The chief of the World Health Organisation said he was on his way to Syria, as bitter cold hampered the search of thousands of flattened buildings and threatened the lives of many quake victims who are without shelter and drinking water.
Relatives were left scouring body bags laid out in a hospital car park in Turkey's southern city of Antakya to search for missing relatives, an indication of the scale of the tragedy.
"We found my aunt, but not my uncle," said Rania Zaboubi, a Syrian refugee who lost eight members of her family.
Chances of finding survivors have dimmed now that the 72-hour mark that experts consider the most likely period to save lives has passed.
The 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday as people slept, in a region where many had already suffered loss and displacement due to Syria's civil war.
WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday that he was heading to Syria.
"On my way to Syria, where WHO is supporting essential health care in the areas affected by the recent earthquake," Tedros tweeted.
But in a potentially life-saving development, an aid convoy reached rebel-held northwestern Syria earlier in the day, the first since the quake, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing told AFP.
- Freezing temperatures -
The crossing is the only way UN assistance can reach civilians without going through areas controlled by Syrian government forces.
A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to authorise the opening of new cross-border humanitarian aid points between Turkey and Syria to deliver aid.
Four million people living in rebel-held areas of northwest Syria have had to rely on the Bab al-Hawa crossing as part of a cross-border aid operation authorised by the Security Council nearly a decade ago.
"This is the moment of unity, it's not a moment to politicise or to divide but it is obvious that we need massive support," Guterres said.
Temperatures in the Turkish city of Gaziantep plunged to minus five degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) early Thursday, but thousands of families spent the night in cars and makeshift tents -- too scared or banned from returning to their homes.
Parents walked the streets of the city -- close to the epicentre of Monday's earthquake -- carrying their children in blankets because it was warmer than sitting in a tent.
Gyms, mosques, schools and some stores have opened at night. But beds are still at a premium and thousands spend the nights in cars with engines running to provide heat.
"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 into the night.
International rescuers have said the intense cold has forced them to weigh whether to use their limited fuel supplies to keep warm or to carry out their work.
- Racing against the clock -
"Not a single person has failed to mention this, the cold," Athanassios Balafas, a Greek fire official, said in Athens. "Obviously we chose to keep operating."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged on Wednesday that there were "shortcomings" in the government's handling of the disaster.
Monday's quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province.
Officials and medics said 17,674 people had died in Turkey and 3,377 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 21,051.
Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply.
Anger has mounted over the government's handling of the disaster.
"People who didn't die from the earthquake were left to die in the cold," Hakan Tanriverdi told AFP in Adiyaman province, one of the areas hardest hit.
Despite the difficulties, thousands of local and foreign searchers have not given up the hunt for more survivors.
Two dozen children and some of their parents from northern Cyprus -- 39 Turkish Cypriots in all -- were on a school trip to join a volleyball tournament when the quake hit their hotel in southeast Turkey's Adiyaman.
Their home region's government has declared a national mobilisation, hiring a private plane so they could join the search-and-rescue effort for the children.
Ilhami Bilgen, whose brother Hasan was on the volleyball team, looked at the frightening pile of concrete slabs and heavy bricks that used to be the hotel.
"There's a hollow over there. The children may have crawled into it," Bilgen said. "We still haven't given up hope."
- Donor conference -
Dozens of nations, including China and the United States have pledged to help.
The World Bank said it would give $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey to help relief and recovery efforts.
Immediate assistance of $780 million will be offered from two existing projects in Turkey, said the bank, while an added $1 billion in operations is being prepared to support people affected amid recovery and reconstruction.
In addition to a staggering human toll, the quake's economic cost appears likely to exceed $2 billion and could reach $4 billion or more, Fitch Ratings said.
In a first, Swiss rescuers save quake victims abroad
Geneva (AFP) Feb 9, 2023 -
Rescue workers sent by Bern to Turkey have pulled earthquake victims out alive, the government said Thursday, a first in two decades of Swiss participation in international catastrophe response.
Switzerland sent a team of 80 rescue workers hours after the 7.8-magnitude quake hit Turkey and war-ravaged Syria early Monday, in a disaster that has killed more than 20,000 people.
The foreign ministry said Switzerland's specialist team had so far managed to rescue nine people, marking the first time they have brought people out alive.
"We can confirm that this marks indeed the first time in 20 years that Swiss rescue workers sent to assist with catastrophe's abroad have found people alive," foreign ministry spokesman Valentin Clivaz told AFP.
He was confirming a report by public broadcaster RTS, which detailed how the Swiss rescuers on Wednesday evening pulled an elderly woman out of a collapsed building in Hatay, before saving a family of four, including a baby, overnight to Thursday.
Others had been rescued earlier in the week, it said.
Bern is preparing to send another team of dozens of rescue workers, logisticians, doctors and housing specialists to Turkey on Friday.
"Targeted aid is also being envisaged for Syria," the foreign ministry said.
Ten deadliest quakes of the 21st century
Paris (AFP) Feb 9, 2023 -
The massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 is one of the 10 deadliest of the 21st century.
Here is a list of the quakes, ranked by death toll:
- 2004: 230,000 dead, southeast Asia -
On December 26, a massive earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale strikes off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that kills more than 230,000 throughout the region, including 170,000 in Indonesia alone.
Huge waves of 700 kph (around 435 mph) reach heights of 30 metres (100 feet).
- 2010: 200,000 dead, Haiti -
A magnitude 7 quake on January 12 devastates the capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region.
The quake cuts the country off from the rest of the world for 24 hours, killing over 200,000 people, leaving 1.5 million homeless and shattering much of Haiti's frail infrastructure.
In October the same year, Haiti is also hit by a cholera epidemic introduced by Nepalese peacekeepers who arrived after the quake. It kills more than 10,000 people.
- 2008: 87,000 dead, Sichuan -
More than 87,000, including 5,335 school pupils, are left dead or missing when a 7.9-magnitude quake strikes southwestern Sichuan province on May 12.
The quake causes outrage after it emerges 7,000 schools were badly damaged, triggering accusations of shoddy construction, corner-cutting and possible corruption, especially as many other buildings nearby held firm.
- 2005: 73,000 dead, Kashmir -
An October 8 earthquake kills more than 73,000 people, the vast majority in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir.
Some 3.5 million people are displaced.
- 2003: 31,000 dead, Bam (Iran) -
A 6.6-magnitude quake on December 26 in southeastern Iran destroys the ancient mud-brick city of Bam, killing at least 31,000 people.
Nearly 80 percent of Bam's infrastructure is damaged, and the desert citadel, once considered the world's largest adobe building, crumbles.
- 2023: more than 20,000 dead, Turkey and Syria -
On February 6, a 7.8-magnitude quake strikes near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border.
The quake, which is followed by a 7.5 magnitude tremor, reduces entire neighbourhoods of cities in southeastern Turkey and the north of war-ravaged Syria to rubble.
The toll reaches more than 20,000 on Thursday, February 9.
- 2001: 20,000 dead, India -
A massive 7.7 earthquake on January 26 hits the western Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 20,000 people.
The quake flattens buildings across the state, with many fatalities in the town of Bhuj near the border with Pakistan.
- 2011: 18,500 dead, Japan -
On March 11, Japan is struck by an enormous 9.0-magnitude earthquake, unleashing a towering tsunami that levels communities along the northeastern coast.
Around 18,500 people are left dead or missing as the terrifying wall of water travelling at the speed of a jet plane swallows up everything in its path.
The ensuing meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant blankets nearby areas with radiation, rendering some towns uninhabitable for years and displacing tens of thousands of residents.
- 2015: 9,000 dead, Nepal -
A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 25 strikes in central Nepal, triggering avalanches and landslides across the Himalayan nation, destroying schools and hospitals.
The quake kills almost 9,000 people and renders millions homeless, while also reducing more than a hundred monuments to rubble, including centuries-old temples and royal palaces in the Kathmandu valley.
- 2006: 6,000 dead, Java -
On May 26, a 6.3-magnitude quake rocks the southern coast of the Indonesian island of Java, near the city of Yogyakarta, killing around 6,000 people.
More than 420,000 are left homeless and some 157,000 houses are destroyed.
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