Turkey and Syria earthquake: Latest news, video and death toll

WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT: 

Footage has captured the heart-wrenching moment a sobbing child was dug out from the rubble following Syria's devastating earthquake.

Heroic rescue workers were videoed desperately foraging through debris to reach several young children and family members.

The survivors were said to be buried under the wreckage of their home in Jindires, Aleppo, of northern Syria.

The United States said it is working with partners to provide earthquake relief in Syria but would stand firm against working with the Damascus government.

The nation also said it expected to send further assistance to Turkey after sending two rescue teams to the NATO ally, which suffered heavily as well in Sunday's earthquake.

'In Syria itself we have US-funded humanitarian partners that are coordinating lifesaving assistance,' Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters as he met his Austrian counterpart.

'I want to emphasize here that these funds, of course, go to the Syrian people - not to the regime. That won't change.'

North Korea's leader has sent condolences to Syria following the earthquake, a report has claimed.

Kim Jong Un expressed his sympathies to President Bashar al-Assad over the magnitude, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported today.

The latest information shows that 5,894 people were killed in Turkey and at least 1,932 in Syria, for a combined total of 7,826 fatalities.

This could continue to rise, World Health Organisation officials have warned.

In the province of Kahramanmaras, Turkey, where supermarket shelves are empty, people have lined up for pita bread at a restaurant owned by Mevlut Ercan.

'We need flour. There is no flour,' Ercan said.

'People are desperate. We are desperate too. We will do what we can for the people as long as we are able to do it.'

Yasar Magara, who waited to get a piece of pita, said: 'We have been hungry for days. Our municipality and the others have not helped us yet.'

This comes amid calls from survivors that rescue teams have not been fast enough on arriving to the scene of the disaster.

One person tweeted: 'My brother died under the rubble. For hours, no one came. There is no sound from him anymore. Please send the search and rescue teams to Turkey!'

Kurdistan region has resumed oil exports through Turkey after suspending them as a precaution following the deadly earthquake.

'At 9:45 pm (1845 GMT) the Kurdistan region's oil exports resumed via the pipeline connecting the area with Turkey,' the Kurdish ministry of natural resources said in a statement.

The northern region usually exports around 450,000 barrels of oil a day through Turkey, and has continued to pump oil out of the country despite the federal authorities demanding a halt to the trade.

On Monday, authorities had said that 'to ensure the safety of oil exports and prevent any undesirable incidents, oil exports through the pipeline connecting the Kurdistan region to Turkey have been suspended'.

But authorities had said exports through Turkey's Ceyhan port would resume after inspection of pipelines.

Footage taken during the earthquake yesterday in Elbistan, southern Turkey, shows the moment an entire street is left in ruins as high-rise buildings are reduced to rubble in seconds.

The video, taken from the camera of a moving car, shows a building shaking before the others around it collapse.

A cloud of dust then fills the screen, with debris showering down. Three civilians can be seen running across the road to safety.

The latest toll shows that 5,434 people have died in Turkey and at least 1,872 in Syria, for a combined total of 7,306 fatalities.

There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with World Health Organisation officials estimating up to 20,000 may have died.

'It is now a race against time,' said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

'We have activated the WHO network of emergency medical teams to provide essential health care for the injured and most vulnerable,' he added.

Two US Agency for International Development teams will arrive in Turkey on Wednesday morning.

The teams will head to the southeastern province of Adiyaman to focus on urban search and rescue following the tragedy.

Around 80 people will be in each team alongside 12 dogs and special equipment, including tools for concrete breaking.

'They really do work 24/7, they work in shifts, they go around the clock, because every hour does count in the first few days,' said USAID response team leader Stephen Allen.

President Erdogan has expressed his gratitude for the prime minister's 'solidarity in response' to the tragedy, it has been claimed.

In a phone call with the Turkish president, a Downing Street spokesman claims that Rishi Sunak shared his sympathies for the devastation caused by the earthquake.

The spokesman told the BBC: 'President Erdogan thanked the prime minister for the UK's solidarity in response to this tragedy and welcomed international search and rescue and medical support for the initial emergency response.'

The Syrian Government is still a pariah in much of the international community, sanctioned by the US and European countries, which are reluctant to route aid directly through the authority.

American and EU officials have made clear the quake won't change that.

A key issue complicating the dispersal of aid is 'the war and the way the aid response is split between rebel areas and Damascus,' said Aron Lund, a fellow with New York-based think tank Century International who researches Syria.

Aid delivery has also taken a knock from the damage caused to the sole border crossing used to shuttle life-saving aid from Turkey into conflict-ravaged Syria.

A UN spokesman said that this destruction combined with that caused to Hatay airport has 'temporarily disrupted' the supply of aid into northwestern Syria today.

'Every effort is being done to overcome these logistical hurdles, which are created by the earthquake,' added Jens Laerke, of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

The earthquake death toll has now risen above 7,200, official figures show.

It is said that more than 5,400 people have died in Turkey and over 1,800 in Syria.

The toll is likely to climb further as freezing weather and aftershocks have hampered rescue efforts - despite international assistance.

His Majesty King Charles has expressed his condolences for those impacted by the disaster in a message to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He said: 'My wife and I have been most shocked and profoundly saddened by the news of the devastating earthquakes in South East Türkiye. 

'I can only begin to imagine the scale of suffering and loss as a result of these dreadful tragedies and I particularly wanted to convey our deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the families of all those who have lost their loved ones.

'Our thoughts and special prayers are with everyone who has been affected by this appalling natural disaster, whether through injury or the destruction of their property, and also with the emergency services and those assisting in the rescue efforts.'

A team of 77 UK search and rescue specialists, state-of-the-art equipment and four dogs has arrived in Turkey, the Foreign Office has said.

The plane arrived in the city of Gaziantep, south east Turkey, to assist current rescue efforts.

The team is made up of firefighters and staff from 14 fire and rescue services across the UK.

An assessment on the ground will also be conducted by an emergency medical team who were said to be on the flight. 

A grief-stricken father was pictured holding the hand of his 15-year-old daughter who was crushed to death beneath the rubble of a building in Turkey.

Tragic photographs from Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre, showed father Mesut Hancer crouching on the rubble, his hand clutching on to the hand of his dead daughter.

Irmakleyla Hancer was crushed underneath a huge concrete block on Monday. 

Just her hand and a small portion of her face can be seen through a narrow gap in the wreckage of their home.

A spokesperson from the UK-based charity SKT Welfare has warned that hospitals in northern Syria are on short supply of fuel and electricity needed for running generators.

'People are losing that window where they might still survive if they are stuck under the rubble,' she told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Vice President has said that more than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkey alone.

Some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, he also said.

The earthquake's death toll has risen to more than 6,200, official data shows, with rescue workers still searching for trapped survivors.

Authorities say that 4,544 people have died in Turkey and 1,712 in Syria, bringing the total to 6,256.

But assessments by the World Health Organisation suggest that 23 million people or higher could be affected across the two countries.

A massive fire that broke out at Turkey's southern Iskenderun Port yesterday amid a pair of devastating earthquakes has been extinguished, Turkey's defence ministry has said.

The fire was extinguished with the help of the military's helicopters and planes, it said.

All operations at the port were suspended earlier today as a result of severe structural damage and the fire, which had spread through much of the site.

Hundreds of shipping containers were ablaze at the Iskenderun Port earlier on Tuesday, sending thick black smoke into the sky and forcing freight liners to divert vessels to other ports.

The latest official casualty numbers for the disaster have been increased to 3,703 people in Turkey and 1,712 in Syria, for a combined total of 5,415 fatalities.

There are fears that the toll will rise inexorably, with WHO officials estimating up to 20,000 may have been crushed to death in the quakes.

Now thousands more face death from exposure, with winter weather forcing displaced families with little to no clothing or supplies to loot shops for food and set fires in open streets for warmth.

Ukraine will send a team of several dozen rescue workers to Turkey after yesterday's deadly earthquakes.

Kyiv will send 'to the republic of Turkey a combined search-and-rescue team of the State Emergency Service consisting of 87 people', including 10 flight crew members, according to Ukraine's government website.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said he spoke with Turkey's leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and 'expressed condolences over the horrific tragedy that befell the people of Turkey due to the earthquakes'.

'I informed him of the decision to send a group of rescuers and equipment from Ukraine to Turkey to help in overcoming the aftermath of the emergency,' Zelensky said on social media.

'Ukrainian specialists have relevant experience in overcoming the consequences of natural disasters and will arrive in the affected regions as soon as possible,' he added.

Pegasus Airlines has announced that flights away from disaster zones in Turkey will be free of charge for the next five days.

'All our planned domestic direct flights departing from Adana, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Kayseri, Malatya, Kahramanmaraş, Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa airports will be free of charge, including February 12, 2023,' a statement read.

'In order to support the earthquake areas, we continue our efforts to deliver the aid teams and the needed materials to the region and to evacuate our citizens affected by the earthquake.'

Turkish Airlines also started to sell cheap passenger tickets from cities affected by the earthquake late last night.

Turkey hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees who have fled their country's civil war, almost half of them children.

In the 10 Turkish provinces affected by the quake, more than 1.7 million of the 15 million inhabitants are Syrian refugees.

Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR's representative in Turkey, said that in Kilis province, one in two people are Syrian refugees, while in Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Hatay, the figure is one in four or five.

'We do not know the exact number of refugees impacted and we might not for some days, but we fear the number might be significant, given the epicentre of the quake was close to areas with high concentrations of refugees,' said Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesman for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Some of the areas are hard to reach, slowing a 'comprehensive assessment on loss of lives and damages', he told reporters in Geneva.

Prisoners have rioted in a northwestern Syria prison that was damaged by yesterday's earthquakes, with at least 20 inmates escaping the jail holding mostly Islamic State members.

The military police prison in the town of Rajo near the Turkish border holds about 2,000 inmates, with about 1,300 of them suspected to be IS fighters, a source told AFP.

'After the earthquake struck, Rajo was affected and inmates started to mutiny and took control of parts of the prison,' said the official at Rajo jail, which is controlled by pro-Turkish factions.

'About 20 prisoners fled... who are believed to be IS militants.'

The United Arab Emirates is to allocate $100 million to support earthquake relief efforts in Syria and Turkey, state news agency WAM reported on Tuesday.

It is one of the largest commitments of aid to the stricken region from any nation so far.

Search teams and emergency aid from around the world are poured into Turkey and Syria, but with the damage spread over a wide area, the massive relief operation is struggling to reach devastated towns in more remote areas.

Yakup Taş, a prominent member of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK party, has been found dead in Kahramanmaras along with his family.

'Our Deputy Yakup Taş and his family, like many of our fellow countrymen, are under the rubble due to the earthquake. Would you please include our deputy and his family in your prayers…' a statement posted on his social media accounts read.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said search teams found 63-year-old Tas' body amid the rubble of his home in the city of Adiyaman. His wife, brother, sister-in-law, a grandchild and two nephews also perished, Anadolu reported.

Speaker of Turkey's Grand National Assembly, Mustafa Şentop, said: 'I learned with deep sadness that AK Party Deputy Yakup Taş, who was under the rubble in the earthquake disaster, lost his life. I wish God's mercy on our deceased deputy and all our citizens who lost their lives in the earthquake, and I wish patience and condolences to our nation.'

Turkish officials have announced a suspension of all operations at the key port of Iskenderun after the city suffered significant structural damage amid the quakes.

The city's state hospital was partially demolished by the tremors yesterday, trapping hundreds of patients under debris, while several shipping containers were overturned and their contents caught alight.

The resulting fire quickly spread out of control and set huge sections of the port ablaze. Flames burned overnight, sending a huge plume of black smoke into the sky.

Iskenderun has been a vital point of access for ships which have been carrying out evacuation efforts - it is unclear whether the suspension of port activities also extends to the ongoing rescue missions. 

Three British nationals are missing following the earthquake which struck south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, the Foreign Secretary has said.

Making a statement in the Commons, James Cleverly said: 'As of this morning, we know that three British nationals are missing and the Foreign Office's Crisis Response Hub is working to support the at least 35 British nationals who have been directly affected by these earthquakes.

'We assess that the likelihood of large-scale British casualties remains low.'

The sole border crossing used to shuttle life-saving aid from Turkey into conflict-ravaged Syria has been severely damaged by the quakes, preventing aid from freely flowing across the border.

'The cross-border operation has itself been impacted,' Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.

Humanitarian aid in rebel-held areas usually arrives through Turkey via a cross-border mechanism created in 2014 by a UN Security Council resolution, but it is contested by Damascus and its ally Moscow and over time the number of crossing points has been reduced from four to one.

Areas now surrounding the one remaining border crossing have suffered significant infrastructure damage.

'There is a window of about seven days' when survivors are generally found, Laerke said, adding it was 'critical' to get teams to those in immediate need as soon as possible.

'It is imperative that everybody sees it as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake. Please don't politicise this. Let's get the aid out to the people who so desperately need it.'

Erdogan has announced an increase in the official death toll in Turkey and provided more details on the state of aid delivery in the southeast.

'We have 3549 deaths and 22,168 injuries. Our biggest consolation is that more than 8 thousand of our citizens have been rescued from the rubble so far,' Erdogan said.

'We are declaring 10 provinces where the earthquake occurred as Disaster Areas Affecting General Life. Based on the authority given to us by Article 119 of the Constitution, we have decided to declare a state of emergency.

'53,317 search and rescue officers were directed to the region, this number is increasing with domestic and international support.

'We have transferred 100 billion liras' worth of resources to the disposal of our institutions. 54 thousand tents and 102 thousand beds were sent to the victims.

'In total, 5 thousand health personnel and nearly a thousand ambulances were transferred to the regions.'

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency in 10 southeastern provinces hit by yesterday's earthquakes as search and rescue teams rush to extract survivors from the rubble.

'We have decided to declare a state of emergency to ensure that our (rescue and recovery) work can be carried out quickly,' Erdogan said in televised remarks.

Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and the official death toll this morning surpassed 5,000 - though this is expected to sharply increase.

This is the heartwrenching moment a brave five-year-old girl told her father she was 'fine' while trapped underneath the debris of a collapsed building amid yesterday's massive earthquakes in Turkey.

Little Ayşe Kubra Güneş couldn't move after the six-storey building she lived in collapsed in the Pazarcik district centre in Kahramanmaras.

Ayşe, her brother and her parents were buried underneath the rubble after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The rest of her family were rescued relatively quickly but Ayşe was harder to reach and was trapped for around seven hours.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a plan to open hotels to house victims displaced by yesterday's huge earthquakes.

Erdogan specified that hotels will be opened to those in need in Antalya region first, but more are expected to follow.

Thousands of buildings, many of them high-rise apartment blocks, were brought down in southeastern Turkey amid the quakes. 

Here's a round-up of just some of the aid being prepared by countries around the world to support Turkey and Syria - though the latter appears to be receiving considerably less help.

- European Union - mobilised 27 search and rescue and medical teams from 19 countries to help Turkey

The United Nations' cultural agency says it has undertaken a preliminary survey of damage to heritage sites in the earthquake-hit areas, with an aim to help rapidly secure and stabilise them.

The Paris-based UNESCO is 'particularly concerned about the situation in the ancient city of Aleppo' in Syria, which is on the list of endangered World Heritage.

'Significant damage has been noted in the citadel. The western tower of the old city wall has collapsed and several buildings in the souks have been weakened,' the statement said.

In Turkey, UNESCO said it was saddened by the news of the collapse of several buildings at the Diyarbakir Fortress and Hevsel Gardens, a World Heritage site which goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times.

Turkish and Kurdish communities in Germany have launched donation drives to send money, warm clothes and blankets to victims of the devastating earthquakes that ravaged southern Turkey and northern Syria.

As news of the disaster spread and sparked frantic appeals for help, volunteers began collecting aid in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich for the thousands left injured or homeless after their homes were destroyed.

Germany has around 2.3 million people of Turkish origin, the largest Turkish diaspora community in the world, according to the Turkish Community in Germany.

The United Nations children's agency said on Tuesday that the earthquake and aftershocks that destroyed scores of buildings in Turkey and Syria likely killed thousands of children.

'The earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria early yesterday morning may have killed thousands of children,' UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters at a briefing in Geneva.

He added the organisation could not determine a specific death toll of children, but the official number of casualties has already surpassed 5,000 people and is increasing each hour.

This is the harrowing moment a newborn baby was rescued from the remains of a collapsed building in Syria - moments after the girl was born under the rubble.

Footage shows the miracle baby, just minutes old, being carried to safety in the arms of a rescuer in Jenderes, in a northeast Syrian region devastated by yesterday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake.

But while the little girl survived the ordeal, her mother is thought to have tragically died after giving birth.

According to local media, the pregnant mother - displaced from Syria's Deir Ezzor  - region - went into labour during the quake which has so far killed more than 5,000 across Turkey and Syria.

Video captures the moment one of a number of rescuers ran from the devastated building, carrying the tiny infant to safety across a mass of twisted metal, broken concrete and barbed wire.

Syria's Red Crescent aid organisation has declared it is ready to deliver relief to all the country's regions, including opposition-held areas, and is urging the United Nation to facilitate this.

'We do not differentiate between any of the Syrian people. We are the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for all the Syrian people,' Khaled Hboubati told in a news conference.

The Red Crescent's headquarters are located in the government-held capital Damascus, but there are thousands of people living in opposition-controlled areas also in serious need of help.

'We are ready to send an aid convoy through the crossline to the stricken areas in Idlib region (in northern Syria). If they (the opposition) opened a road for us, we will go. We have no problem with this," Hboubati said.

He appealed to the United Nations, which has long coordinated the aid and relief operations in opposition-held areas, to help.

Senior officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) say Syria is likely to suffer an even worse humanitarian crisis in the coming weeks.

Adelheid Marschang, WHO Senior Emergency Officer, said Turkey had a strong capacity to respond to the crisis but that the main unmet needs in the immediate and mid-term would be across the border in Syria, already grappling with a years-long humanitarian crisis due to the civil war and a cholera outbreak.

'All over Syria, the needs are the highest after nearly 12 years of protracted, complex crisis, while humanitarian funding continues to decline,' she said.

The UN has also temporarily halted its delivery of vital aid to northern Syria due to structural damage to the key transport links between the country and southern Turkey.

'Some roads are broken, some are inaccessible. There are logistical issues that need to be worked through," Madevi Sun-Suona, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), admitted.

'We don't have a clear picture of when it will resume.'

Trading on the Istanbul stock market has been halted for a second time since yesterday's brutal earthquakes following heavy losses in the wake of Monday's devastating earthquake in Turkey and neighbouring Syria.

The market-wide circuit-breaker was issued at 1004 GMT, preventing all trades with the benchmark BIST-100 index down 7.01% and the banking index down 6.41%. 

On Monday, the BIST-100 tumbled as much as 4.99% before circuit breakers came into effect, suspending trading in dozens of shares, and trading volumes remained at a fraction of last week's average.

Professor Carlo Doglioni, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, has said the shifting of the tectonic plates that caused the earthquakes in Turkey caused the country to move about three metres.

'What we call the Arabian plate moved about three meters along a northeast-southwest direction in relation to the Anatolian plate,' adding there was a displacement of more than three metres for roughly 100 miles.

Much of Turkey sits on the Anatolian plate, but southeast Turkey crosses over into the Arabian plate alongside Syria. 

Hospital patients in the southern Turkish region of Antayka, close to the border with Syria, have been left to fend for themselves as medical staff abandoned the damaged facility amid the quakes, Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford has claimed.

Desperate residents driven from their homes are now resorting to looting food from supermarkets as they try to survive the bitter winter chill without shelter.

'People feel that they have been forgotten, that they haven't received help, that they're still not getting help,' said Crawford.

'There are still patients in there, some of them have been killed by the earthquake - others have died because they haven't been looked after in the interim.'

Antayka is one of Turkey's poorer regions and has a high concentration of Syrian refugees who fled the civil war. It is yet to receive coordinated aid.

The death toll from the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria could climb as high as 20,000 in the coming days, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The current number of casualties officially stands at 5,021, but thousands more are trapped under rubble across a more than 200-mile stretch of land from southeastern Turkey to northern Syria.

The threat of aftershocks and bitter winter conditions mean more are likely to be killed or die due to exposure.

More than 20,000 people have also sustained considerable injuries, according to Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority.

Up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquakes that have killed thousands in Turkey and Syria, the World Health Organisation has claimed.

'Event overview maps show that potentially 23 million people are exposed, including around five million vulnerable populations,' WHO senior emergencies officer Adelheid Marschang told the UN health agency's executive committee.

WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier admitted there are still areas in Turkey and Syria that governments and aid organisations have been unable to contact following the quakes.

'We're especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information,' Tedros said.

Turkish government officials have declared some 13.5 million people were living in areas damaged by the earthquakes.

In Istanbul, thousands of aid volunteers have flocked to the city's main airport offering to participate in the search and rescue efforts.

People across Turkey have also rushed to hospitals offering to donate blood.

Officials added that some progress had been made in restoring power and re-opening highways in the disaster-affected areas - a significant factor in helping aid workers travel to disaster hotspots.

The chairwoman of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee has said Britons should donate to a Syrian humanitarian group if they want to help with rescue efforts after the earthquake.

Alicia Kearns told BBC Radio Scotland that the UK Government can do less in Syria than in Turkey due to the country's fraught political situation.

Asked what people in the UK who felt 'helpless' could do, Ms Kearns said support should be given to the White Helmets - a humanitarian group which has worked to save lives as the civil war in the country raged.

'I would ask anyone wanting to help, particularly in Syria... please donate to the White Helmets.

'The amazing videos you're seeing of children being pulled out of destroyed buildings, the reason these people are expert at it is because they've spent 12 years pulling people out of burnt-down bombed buildings.'

More than 5,000 people are now confirmed dead following three earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria in the past day.

1,602 people have died in government- and rebel-held areas of Syria, and Turkish authorities have upped their official death toll to 3,419.

The number of casualties is expected to increase dramatically in the coming hours and days.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted there are still areas in Turkey and Syria that governments and aid organisations have been unable to contact following the quakes.

'We're especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information,' Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO's executive board meeting in Geneva this morning.

'Damage mapping is one way to understand where we need to focus our attention.'

The number of people killed by the quakes is likely to be considerably higher than the current official death toll as rescuers begin to reach more remote regions.

A third earthquake rocked Turkey early this morning, adding to the misery of yesterday when two others demolished huge swathes of territory in Turkey's southeast and the north of neighbouring Syria.

The 5.8-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 1.2 miles in central Turkey, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said, as rescue efforts continued and as the death toll in Turkey alone rose past 3,300.

A winter storm causing freezing temperatures - which dropped to -5C overnight in some areas - has been hampering those working desperately to free people from the rubble of destroyed buildings, with the cold weather making the need to reach trapped survivors even more urgent.

The death toll in Turkey and Syria is now approaching 5,000, with rescuers locked in a race against time to free as many people from the rubble as possible before it's too late.

Here's a round-up of the events that unfolded overnight:

In Turkey, the death toll climbed to 3,381 people, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.

The death toll in Syria, already devastated by more than 11 years of war, stands at more than 1,500, according to the Syrian government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.

Freezing winter weather hampered search efforts through the night. Temperatures overnight in the quake-hit city of Gaziantep sank to -5 C (23 F), subjecting thousands of displaced people to bitter conditions with little shelter.

Turkey has deployed more than 24,400 search and rescue personnel to the quake area.

10 ships were helping the rescue efforts, by transporting the wounded to hospitals, mainly from the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun.

Disaster management agency official Orhan Tatar said about 55 helicopters had conducted 154 sorties to transport emergency aid and around 85 trucks were distributing food.

Tatar said his agency had received 11,342 reports of collapsed buildings, but only 5,775 of those reports have been confirmed.