Rescue teams have worked through the night to rescue people clinging to life under the rubble eight days after the worst earthquake in modern Turkey's history, but hopes of finding many more survivors are fading as the hours.
A boy and a man were rescued early this Tuesday 198 hours after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Kahramanmaras.
In other areas, rescue teams are trying to reach a grandmother, a mother and a daughter, all from the same family, who appear to have survived the quake and aftershock that killed more than 37,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
But others are already preparing to inevitably scale back operations as freezing temperatures reduced already slim chances of survival, and some Polish rescuers have announced they will leave on Wednesday.
In the shattered Syrian city of Aleppo, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has said the rescue phase is "coming to an end" and that the focus would be on sheltering, feeding and schooling children.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to allow more UN aid to enter the war-torn country from Turkey, diplomats said late on Monday.
Turkish media said rescue teams were hoping to find survivors in various towns in Kahramanmaras province, Adiyaman and Hatay, where there were signs of life under the ruins.
But in the southern city of Antakya, bulldozers have already begun tearing down badly damaged buildings and removing rubble. The blue lights of the ambulances light up the dark streets every so often, where there is still no electricity and the smell of smoke fills the air.
Hundreds of people leave the city every day, and those who remain huddle around bonfires on street corners and in parks, sleeping in tents or in cars.
As they work through the night, rescue teams occasionally call for silence to hear the faintest sound of life beneath the rubble.
In Kahramanmaras, rescue teams have said they have contacted a grandmother, her daughter and a baby trapped in a room amid the remains of a three-story building. Rescue teams are digging a second tunnel to reach them, after a first route was blocked, and a human chain has formed to remove the rubble in buckets.
"I have a strong feeling that we are going to reach them," says Burcu Baldauf, head of the team of Turkish health volunteers. "It's already a miracle. After seven days, they are there without water, without food and in good condition."
The number of Turkish victims now exceeds 31,643 dead, worse than in the earthquake that occurred in 1939, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority reported on Monday, making it the worst earthquake in Turkey's modern history.
The total number of fatalities in Syria, a nation ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, stands at 5,714, including those killed both in the rebel enclave and in government-controlled areas.
It is the sixth deadliest natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 quake that killed at least 73,000 people in Pakistan.
Turkey is facing a bill of up to $84 billion, according to a business group. Turkish Urban Planning Minister Murat Kurum stated that some 42,000 buildings had collapsed, were in urgent need of demolition or had suffered serious damage in 10 cities.
Dozens of overwhelmed residents and first responders who have spoken to Reuters express their bewilderment at the lack of water, food, medicine, body bags and cranes in the disaster area in the first days after the quake struck, with many criticizing what they see as a slow and centralized response by the Turkish Emergency and Disaster Management Authority (AFAD).
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections in June that are expected to be the toughest in his two decades in power, has acknowledged problems in the initial response but said the situation was now under control.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
