Rescue workers and volunteers pull out a survivor from the rubble in Diyarbakir in Türkiye, after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's south-east, February 6, 2023. /CFP
Rescuers raced on Tuesday to find survivors in the rubble of thousands of buildings brought down by two large earthquakes and multiple aftershocks that struck Türkiye and neighboring Syria on Monday, with the discovery of more bodies raising the death toll to more than 7,800.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for three months in ten provinces. The death toll in the country alone has risen to 5,894.
Countries around the world dispatched teams to assist in the rescue efforts, and Türkiye's disaster management agency said more than 24,400 emergency personnel were now on the ground. But with such a wide swath of territory hit by Monday's earthquakes and nearly 6,000 buildings confirmed to have collapsed in Türkiye alone, the efforts were spread thin.
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Attempts to reach survivors were also impeded by temperatures below freezing and close to 200 aftershocks, which made the search through unstable structures perilous.
Across Hatay province, just southwest of the earthquake's epicenter, officials say as many as 1,500 buildings were destroyed and many people reported relatives being trapped under the rubble with no aid or rescue teams arriving.
In areas where teams worked, occasional cheers broke out through the night as survivors were brought out of the rubble.
The quake, which was centered in Türkiye's southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo.
Sebastien Gay, the head of mission in Syria for Doctors Without Borders, said health facilities in northern Syria were overwhelmed with medical personnel working around "around the clock to respond to the huge numbers of wounded."
In Türkiye's Hatay province, thousands of people sheltered in sports centers or fair halls, while others spent the night outside, huddled in blankets around fires.
Türkiye has large numbers of troops in the border region with Syria and has tasked the military to aid in the rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said a humanitarian aid brigade based in Ankara and eight military search and rescue teams had also been deployed.
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A navy ship docked on Tuesday at the province's port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to the nearby city of Mersin. Thick, black smoke rose from another area of the port, where firefighters have not yet been able to douse a fire that broke out among shipping containers that were toppled by the quakes.
In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, a provincial capital about 33 kilometers from the epicenter, people took refuge in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centers.
The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed over to 800 people, with some 1,400 injured, according to the health ministry. In the country's rebel-held northwest, at least 790 were killed and more than 2,200 injured.
Authorities fear the death toll will keep climbing as the rescuers look for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria's 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
In the latest pledges of international help, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it was especially concerned about areas of Türkiye and Syria.
"We're especially concerned about areas where we do not yet have information," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the WHO's executive board meeting in Geneva. "Damage mapping is one way to understand where we need to focus our attention."
Search and rescue operations continue after M7.7 earthquake hits Malatya, Türkiye, February 6, 2023. /CFP
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The quake piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the affected area is divided between government-controlled territory and the country's last opposition-held enclave. Türkiye is home to millions of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
Strained medical centers quickly filled with injured people, rescue workers said. Some facilities had to be emptied, including a maternity hospital, according to the SAMS medical organization.
More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, according to Orhan Tatar, an official with Türkiye's disaster management authority.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Türkiye in 1999.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured Monday's quake at 7.8, with a depth of 18 kilometers. Hours later, another quake, likely triggered by the first, struck more than 100 kilometers away with a magnitude of 7.5 .
The second jolt caused a multistory apartment building in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa to topple onto the street in a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, as seen in a video of the scene.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria's cities of Aleppo and Hama to Türkiye's Diyarbakir, more than 330 kilometers to the northeast.
(With input from agencies)