Turkey-Syria quakes updates: Thousands dead; searches ongoing

Turkey says 2,316 people have been killed and 13,293 injured in Monday’s earthquakes.

Emergency services said 7,340 people have been rescued so far.

Syrian doctors are calling for help as hospitals in the country fill up with hundreds of survivors of Monday’s earthquakes.

At least 1,293 people have been killed and 3,411 injured in Syria in Monday’s earthquakes, the government and rescue workers say.

In government-controlled areas, the toll rose to 593 dead and 1,411 injured in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, Syria’s health ministry said.

In rebel-held parts of the country’s northwest, at least 700 people have been killed and more than 2,000 injured, according to the White Helmets rescue group.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has said it is “committed” to delivering aid to Syrians, but it ruled out reaching out to the government in Damascus, which it does not recognise as legitimate.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that Washington will not engage with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes that struck Syria and Turkey on Monday.

“It would be quite ironic – if not even counterproductive – for us to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now … Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide the type of assistance in the aftermath of these tragic earthquakes,” Price said.

Drone footage shows the scale of devastation in Turkey and Syria caused by the earthquakes.

The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey has risen to 1,762, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority says.

At least 12,068 people have been injured, the agency said.

The United Arab Emirates says it will send humanitarian assistance worth $13.6m to Syria after Monday’s earthquakes, state media report.

Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum “directed urgent humanitarian aid to those affected in Syria”, the official news agency WAM said.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority says 6,445 people have been rescued from collapsed buildings after Monday’s earthquakes.

The agency said at least 5,606 buildings have been destroyed after the quakes hit southeastern Turkey.

Erdogan says Turkey will observe seven days of national mourning for the victims of Monday’s earthquakes.

“A national mourning period has been declared for seven days,” the Turkish president said in a tweet. “Our flag will be lowered to half-staff until sunset on Sunday, February 12, 2023, in all our national and foreign representative offices.”

The death toll from Monday’s earthquakes in Syria has increased to 968, according to the government and rescue groups.

The quake killed at least 538 people and injured 1,353 in government-controlled parts of Syria, including the provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus, the health ministry said.

In rebel-held parts of the northwest, at least 430 people were killed and more than 1,050 were injured, the White Helmets rescue group said, warning that the toll could increase.

Turkey’s health ministry says the death toll from Monday’s earthquakes has risen to 1,651.

At least 11,119 people have been injured, it said.

The Turkish Football Federation says it has postponed all club games following the deadly earthquakes.

“All planned competitions have been postponed to a later date,” the federation tweeted.

“We wish God’s mercy to our citizens who lost their lives in the earthquake that has plunged our country into mourning, our condolences to their families, relatives and our nation, and a speedy recovery to our wounded,” the tweet said.

Three league games had been scheduled for Monday, including second-place Fenerbahce at home to Konyaspor. The next matches are set for Friday.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to offer his condolences and say Greece is ready to send help, according to his office.

Erdogan thanked Mitsotakis for the support, the Greek prime minister’s office said in a statement.

Biden says he has authorised an immediate response to the devastating earthquakes in Turkey.

“Our teams are deploying quickly to begin to support Turkish search and rescue efforts and address the needs of those injured and displaced,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

Ghana national football team player Christian Atsu is reportedly missing in Turkey following the earthquakes.

The 31-year-old – who previously had spells with Newcastle United, Everton and Porto – has been playing for Hatayspor in Antakya in the Turkish Super Lig since September.

Atsu was the hero for The Star of the South on Sunday, coming off the bench to score a 97th-minute goal in a 1-0 win over Kasimpasa.

Newcastle United, where Atsu spent five years, tweeted: “Praying for some positive news.”

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay says the earthquake death toll has risen to at least 1,541 in his country.

The quake has injured 9,733 people and destroyed 3,471 buildings, he said.

Tens of thousands of people affected by the earthquakes in Turkey are in urgent need of basic humanitarian support, Sezgin Karagoz, international coordinator of the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, told Al Jazeera from Kilis, one of the cities hit by the quakes.

“It is basic support – mostly food and shelter like tents, mats, raincoats, electric heaters or blankets,” he said. “It is very basic needs. It is very cold out here because it is winter.”

“It’s been snowing and raining all day. People need to stay warm,” he said.

The United Nations General Assembly has observed a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of the earthquakes that hit Syria and Turkey.

“Our teams are on the ground assessing the needs and providing assistance,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “We count on the international community to help the thousands of families hit by this disaster, many of whom were already in dire need of humanitarian aid in areas where access is a challenge.”

Qatar says it will start operating relief flights to Turkey to transport search and rescue teams to the earthquake-affected zones along with vehicles, a field hospital, tents and other supplies, its state news agency reported.

Qatar-funded Qatar Charity said it was distributing 27,000 hot meals in Gaziantep, where it has an office, and was supplying relief items to shelters in Turkey and Syria.

The group allocated $6m for the first stages of its response.

Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, says at least 10 cities in the southeastern part of Turkey have been affected by the earthquake.

“We are talking about a vast geography,” Koseoglu said. “We are talking about at least 10 million people who live in these cities. This is a tough task for the Turkish authorities and local rescue workers to deal with.”

“We are hearing that rescue workers have not even been able to reach some of the places,” she added.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) says its emergency teams are ready to be deployed to Turkey and Syria.

“We are shocked by the devastating earthquake that hit Türkiye and Syria at the height of a harsh winter,” UNOCHA said on Twitter.

It added that its “teams are assessing the damage” and are “ready to deploy”.

Powerful earthquakes have sent multistorey buildings crumbling to the ground in parts of Turkey and Syria, killing more than 2,300 people.

Two major fault lines along the Anatolian Plate have generated a number of big quakes.

The initial magnitude 7.8 tremor on Monday morning, which was followed by a magnitude 7.6 quake hours later, had the same magnitude as one that killed about 30,000 people in 1939 in northeastern Turkey. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the western city of Izmit in 1999 when more than 17,000 people died.

Experts say several factors have compounded to make the death toll so large.

Read more here.

Monday’s earthquakes are the latest disaster for people who have already suffered much.

The images of Syrians, young and old, being pulled from rubble have sadly become a common sight over the nearly 12 years of war in Syria, particularly in the opposition-held northwest of the country.

But this time it was not air raids or shelling but a natural phenomenon that was responsible.

Read more here.

The death toll in Turkey has risen to 1,498, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority says.

Orhan Tatar, a senior official at the agency, said all the areas impacted by the quakes have been reached by emergency response teams and reinforcements are also arriving.

At least 8,533 people have been injured and 2,834 buildings have been destroyed across southeastern Turkey, Tatar said.

Schools across Turkey will be closed until February 13, the Ministry of National Education says after Monday’s earthquake.

At least 1,121 deaths have been reported in Turkey and more than 7,630 injuries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered condolences in a phone call to his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, for the victims of the earthquake and pledged to send rescue teams and assistance, the Syrian presidency says.

The quake has killed more than 780 people in Syria.

The death toll in Turkey has risen to 1,121, according to the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority.

The earthquake injured at least 7,634 people, the agency said, adding that 2,834 buildings have been destroyed. It said 120 aftershocks have been recorded.

United States President Joe Biden says he is “deeply saddened” by the earthquake and loss of life in Turkey and Syria and has promised help from Washington.

“I have directed my team to continue to closely monitor the situation in coordination with Turkiye and provide any and all needed assistance,” the president tweeted.

The Vatican says Pope Francis is “deeply saddened” by the major earthquake that has hit Turkey and Syria.

“His Holiness Pope Francis was deeply saddened to learn of the huge loss of life caused by the earthquake. … He sends the assurance of his spiritual closeness to all those affected,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said in a statement.

The United Kingdom says it will send search and rescue specialists and an emergency medical team to Turkey.

The British foreign ministry said 76 search and rescue specialists will arrive in Turkey on Monday evening along with four search dogs and rescue equipment.

“We stand ready to provide further support as needed,” James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, said in a statement.

The death toll from the earthquake in Syria has risen to at least 783 people, the government and rescue workers in opposition-held areas say.

The Syrian Ministry of Health said casualties rose to 403 dead and 1,284 injured in the government-controlled provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus.

The White Helmets rescue group, which operates in rebel-held areas, reported more than 380 people have been killed and over 1,000 injured.

The death toll from a magnitude 7.8 earthquake and aftershocks in southern Turkey along the border with Syria continues to rise.

The earthquake on Monday morning at 4:17am (01:17 GMT) was centred in the Pazarcik district of Kahramanmaras Province.

Follow our live tracker here.

A TV crew was broadcasting live from Malatya when a second major earthquake hit Turkey on Sunday.

The magnitude 7.6 quake struck hours after the initial magnitude 7.8 earthquake as dozens of aftershocks are reported throughout the region.

Israel says Syria has asked it for help responding to the earthquake and it is prepared to oblige. If it does so, it would be a rare instance of cooperation between the neighbours although Israeli officials did not specify if the request came from the Syrian government or from opposition groups.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech that he had ordered Israeli aid sent to Turkey, where the epicentre of Monday’s earthquake is located. “Since a request was also received to do this for many victims of the earthquake in Syria, I instructed to do this as well,” he added.

Asked who had made the request regarding Syria, an Israeli official told the Reuters news agency “the Syrians”. Asked if this referred to opposition members or to President Bashar al-Assad’s government, the official said only “Syria”.

A second Israeli official said the request had been relayed to the Netanyahu government “by a diplomatic source”. There was no immediate Syrian response to the Israeli statements.

Tremors from the powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Turkey were felt as far away as Greenland, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said.

“The large earthquakes in Turkey were clearly registered on the seismographs in Denmark and Greenland,” seismologist Tine Larsen told the AFP news agency.

“The waves from the earthquake reached the seismograph on the Danish island of Bornholm approximately five minutes after the shaking started,” Larsen said of the quake, which hit at 4:17am (01:17 GMT).

“Eight minutes after the earthquake, the shaking reached the east coast of Greenland, propagating further through all of Greenland,” she added.

In addition to the devastation from the earthquakes, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay says authorities are struggling with “extremely severe weather conditions”.

“We are trying to reach the region as quickly as possible,” Oktay told the media.

TV images of rescue operations in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir showed dozens of rescuers and volunteers searching through rubble for survivors in their winter jackets and face scarves with snow on the ground.

“It’s cold, and many people have lost homes,” said Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut. “They’re out in the open, and already the north of Syria is home to millions of people who live in tents.”

Read more here. 

China says it is willing to provide humanitarian emergency aid to earthquake-struck Turkey and Syria.

It was in touch with Turkey and Syria, a spokesperson from China International Development Cooperation Agency said.

The European Union, Iran, Israel, India, Russia, Qatar, and Ukraine have pledged aid to the affected countries.

Read more here.

The airport in the southern Turkish province of Adana has been closed for flights until further notice following strong earthquakes, the private Demiroren news agency said.

No further details were immediately available. Airports in Gaziantep and Hatay were also previously closed.

Syrian state media have reported that at least 371 people were killed and 1,089 were injured in government-controlled areas.

The death toll in Syria’s opposition-held northwest also rose to 211 and 419 others were injured, The White Helmets said in a tweet.

Residents in the Iraqi provinces of Dohuk and Mosul and the Kurdish capital, Erbil, have reported feeling tremors, state media reported, following an earthquake in Syria.

Syrian state media also reported another earthquake was felt in the capital, Damascus, but gave no further details.

The European Union has said ten search and rescue teams have been mobilised to help the emergency operations in Turkey.

“Ten Urban Search and Rescue teams have been quickly mobilised from Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania to support the first responders on the ground,” EU commissioners Josep Borrell and Janez Lenarcic said in a statement.

Italy and Hungary have also offered their rescue teams, the statement said.

The death toll across Syria has risen to at least 560 people, according to the government and rescue workers in opposition-held areas.

The official news agency SANA, citing the health ministry, said at least 339 people were killed and 1,089 injured in government-controlled areas of the war-torn country. The White Helmets rescue group said at least 221 were killed and 419 injured in opposition-held areas.

A new earthquake of at least magnitude 7.5 has been reported in southeast Turkey by Turkey’s AFAD emergency authority and the United States Geological Service (USGS).

Turkish authorities measured the magnitude at 7.6, while the USGS measured it at 7.5, reporting it hit at 1:24pm (10:24 GMT) four kilometres (2.5 miles) south-southeast of the town of Ekinozu in Kahramanmaras, where the magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit hours earlier.

Live local media footage showed a building collapsing in the town of Malatya during the latest quake.

The Gaziantep castle, which dates back to the Hittite Empire, and was later expanded under the Roman empire, has been damaged in the earthquake.

Video posted by local media showed parts of the castle collapsed, with some debris reportedly tumbling down to the road below.

At least 326 people have been killed by the earthquake in government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria, state media has reported.

The official news agency SANA said at least another 1,042 people had been injured in the earthquake that struck near the southwestern Turkish city of Gaziantep, about 40km (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

Social media users have posted harrowing photos of the destruction in Turkey.

One widely-shared video showed the destruction in Kahramanmaras from above.

Turkish President Erdogan has said the death toll in the country has risen to 912.

He said 5,383 people have been wounded, adding he could not predict how high the casualty numbers would rise.

Al Jazeera’s Suhaib al-Khalaf, reporting from Harem in northwestern Syria, says rescuers are frantically trying to pull people out of the rubble.

“Every 10 minutes, they get a body out,” he said, adding that dozens were feared trapped.

“We heard cheers of people above the rubble; they [rescuers] got a baby who seemed to be alive and was rushed to the hospital.”

Al-Khalaf noted that the local medical sector “is already exhausted” due to Syria’s long-running war.

“People are treated in hospitals, even in corridors, and there is shortage of blood supplies,” he said.

A woman trapped under earthquake rubble. A father calling out to his son.

Videos have emerged showing moments of desperation as rescue operations continue in Turkey and Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered assistance to the Syrian and Turkish governments.

Russia, which is closely allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, maintains a significant military presence in the country and assists in ongoing fighting against opposition groups. Putin also has a strong rapport with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO member which has nevertheless sought to mediate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

“Please accept my deep condolences on the numerous human casualties and large-scale destruction caused by a powerful earthquake in your country,” Putin said in his message to Erdogan on Monday.

Separately, Putin told al-Assad that Russia shared “the sadness and pain of those who lost their loved ones” and said Russia was ready to provide help.

Turkey’s defence ministry says the country’s armed forces have established an air corridor to enable medical and rescue teams to reach the earthquake-hit areas.

“We mobilised our planes to send medical teams, search and rescue teams and their vehicles to the earthquake zone,” a statement by the ministry cited Defence Minister Hulusi Akar as saying.

Turkey’s lira hit a new record low and its stock markets tumbled in the wake of the earthquake, adding to pre-existing pressures from a strong dollar, geopolitical risks and inflation.

The lira slipped to 18.85 in early trade before retracing most of its losses. The country’s main equities benchmark dropped as much as 4.6 percent with banks tumbling more than 5 percent before paring some losses with key indexes down about 2.5 percent on Monday.

“The tragic events with southern part of Turkey being hit by a powerful earthquake is source of additional uncertainty ahead of crucial elections that most likely are going to be held in May,” Piotr Matys, senior FX analyst at In Touch Capital Markets, told Reuters news agency.

Turkey’s emergency response to the earthquake will become a critical issue in upcoming elections in May, which will decide if Erdogan remains the country’s president, as well as the makeup of the legislature, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar says reporting from Istanbul.

“This has come in a very delicate time in terms of weather, and also political conditions that are unfolding in the country,” he said.

“Any failure could really cost President Erdogan and his government. The economy in the country is already deteriorating, it’s not going well. The prices are going higher, the annual inflation is around 80 percent. And so in that sense, for the government handling this crisis is quite important,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has offered emergency aid to Turkey and Syria.

“We are receiving terrible images from Turkey and Syria following an earthquake of unprecedented force,” Macron, whose relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have often been strained, tweeted.

“France is ready to provide emergency relief to the populations on the ground. Our thoughts are with the bereaved families,” he said.

Alaa Nafi, talking to Al Jazeera from Idlib city in Syria, described the earthquake as “extremely horrific and terrifying”.

“Waking up in the middle of the night to the entire building shaking was the worst feeling ever and made it very hard to escape,” he said.

“Seeing people with children out on the streets crying in cold weather was heartbreaking, but we all congregated in one area away from all the buildings,” Nafi said.

At least 147 people have died in opposition-held northwest Syria.

Giving the death toll, the Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets) said on Twitter more than 340 people were injured.

“The toll may increase as many families are still trapped,” it wrote.

There is no damage to the Kerkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries oil from Iraq to Turkey, or the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries oil across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, an energy official told Reuters news agency.

The official said oil flows are continuing on both pipelines following the earthquake, which hit near Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey.

However, operations at the Ceyhan oil terminal in southern Turkey were suspended, the Tribeca shipping agency said, adding that an emergency meeting was being held on the issue.

The magnitude 7.8 quake struck southern Turkey and northwest Syria early on Monday, killing more than 600 people and injuring hundreds as buildings collapsed across the region, triggering searches for survivors in the rubble.

The European Union is sending rescue teams and preparing further help for Turkey, the bloc’s crisis management commissioner has said.

“Teams from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way,” with the EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre overseeing their deployment, commissioner Janez Lenarcic tweeted.

His office said Turkey had requested EU assistance and that the bloc’s Civil Protection Mechanism had been activated in response.

Civilians are helping rescue teams as they attempt to reach hundreds of people still believed to be trapped under the rubble, Al Jazeera’s Suhaib al-Khalaf said.

Al-Khalaf, reporting from Harem, northern Syria, added that civil defence teams were overwhelmed by the scale of the destruction as the health sector also struggled to cater to the injured.

Hundreds of people are still believed to be trapped under rubble. Nearly 900 buildings were destroyed in Turkey’s Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras provinces, said Vice President Fuat Otkay.

He placed the total number of collapsed buildings at 1,718.

Al Jazeera’s Farah Al Zaman Shaoqi, reporting from Ankara, says large trucks are coming in to provide help to the population in the affected area, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reportedly on his way there.

She added that airports in Gaziantep and Hatai have been closed, making it hard for people to travel in and out of these cities.

Teams from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry were also heading there to help manage the livestock, which the population is highly dependent on.

Schools in the 10 provinces will remain closed for a week, Al Zaman Shaoqi said.

Aftershocks following a strong earthquake can continue for “several days, several weeks, maybe even several months”, Chris Elders, professor at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University in Perth Australia, has told Al Jazeera.

“People will continue to feel the effects of the earthquake for some time in this area,” Elders said.

He added that multiple aftershocks of magnitude four or five have already been registered. While of lesser intensity compared with the 7.8 magnitude quake, they were still “very worrying”.

The earthquake occurred at a relatively shallow depth of about 17km (2 miles) below the earth’s surface, which means it was felt with “much greater intensity than if it was deeper in the crust”, Elders said.

At least 284 people have died in Turkey, Vice President Fuat Oktay said.

He added that more than 2,300 have been injured and search and rescue operations are ongoing in several major cities.

The healthcare system in Syria is “overwhelmed” by the number of people in need of medical attention, especially as some hospitals have been damaged by the quake, Mazen Kiwara, Middle East regional director for the Syrian American Medical Society, told Al Jazeera.

Kiwara said his team had to evacuate a maternity hospital in Afrin and reported at least five deaths, including that of a pregnant woman.

“Right now we have a crisis, in addition to very bad weather conditions and collapsed buildings,” he said.

“The effort should be focused on the humanitarian response, especially in shelter and health to protect the population of more than 1.5 million people in northwest Syria alone.”

Rescue teams are carrying out a frantic search for survivors trapped under tangles of metal and chunks of concrete in cities and towns across Turkey and Syria.

The earthquake came as the region is experiencing a snowstorm that is expected to continue until Thursday.

Martin Mai, professor of geophysics at King Abdullah University, has told Al Jazeera the death toll from “one of the largest earthquakes experienced [in the region] for hundreds of years” is likely to keep rising over the coming days.

“In the past, these earthquakes in Turkey have led to about 13,000 fatalities owing to the style of building construction. The sheer size of this event will have a profound economic impact as well,” Mai said.

Italian authorities have withdrawn a tsunami warning for the country’s southern coast that was raised after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake.

Italy’s Civil Protection Department had issued a statement recommending that people move away from coastal areas. Train traffic in the southern regions of Sicily, Calabria and Apulia had been temporarily halted as a precaution but resumed in the morning, the agency said in the statement.

Some 237 people have been killed and 639 injured in Syria in the powerful earthquake, Assistant Health Minister Ahmed Dhamiriyeh told state television.

The affected part of Syria is divided between government- and opposition-held areas.

In rebel-held northwest Syria, the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation as “disastrous”, adding that entire buildings have collapsed and people are trapped under the rubble.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country is ready to provide necessary assistance to Turkish people in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck the country.

“We extend our condolences to the families of the victims and wish the injured a speedy recovery. We are in this moment close to the Turkish people, ready to provide the necessary assistance,” Zelenskyy said in Turkish on Twitter.

The Syrian Civil Defence has declared a state of emergency in northwestern Syria following Monday’s “catastrophic” earthquake and appealed for international humanitarian assistance.

“The earthquake has resulted in hundreds of injuries, dozens of deaths, and people being stranded in the winter cold. Adverse weather conditions, including low temperatures and stormy weather, have compounded the dire situation,” the opposition group, which is also known as the White Helmets, said in a statement.

The organisation also urged “the international community to support the rescue of civilians in Syria and to put pressure on the Assad regime and its Russian ally to ensure that there is no bombing in the affected areas”.

More than 100 people have been killed in government-held parts of Syria, the Syrian health ministry said in a statement.

“516 injuries and 111 deaths recorded in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus,” the ministry said in a statement.

The United States has expressed profound concern over reports of the “destructive earthquake” in Turkey and Syria and said it stood ready to provide “any and all needed assistance”.

US President Joe Biden has now directed government agencies to assess response options to help those most affected, the White House said in a statement.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) says initial reports from quake-hit areas in the country’s southeast indicate that at least 76 people have died.

It said an additional 440 people were reported injured.

In a statement carried by the state-run Anadolu Agency, AFAD listed the affected regions so far as Kahramanmaras, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana, Adiyaman, Malatya, Osmaniye, Hatay and Kilis. It said 42 aftershocks were recorded following Monday’s quake.

The organisation has declared a “level 4 alarm” and called for international help.

Syrian state media say at least 42 people have died in the provinces of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia.

At least 200 people were also injured, the SANA news agency reported citing the Syrian health ministry.

Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said bad weather across the country could hinder search and rescue efforts in areas affected by Monday’s earthquake.

“The flights from Istanbul and Ankara to eastern Turkey have been cancelled because of wind, rain and snow in Istanbul and heavy snow in Ankara. So we cannot easily access the affected areas,” she said.

“And in eastern Turkey, in Gaziantep, there is heavy snow. And in Kahramanmaras, there is rain. Our colleagues and friends in the area say they are outside, in the cold, and that they are afraid to go inside their buildings.”

She added, “The bad weather conditions will also make work difficult for the rescue workers.”

A resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the earthquake’s epicentre, told the Reuters news agency that the tremor rocked buildings in his city “like a baby in a crib”.

“I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I’ve lived,” said Erdem, who declined to give his surname.

“We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib.”

It was still too dark to see the nature of the damage, he added.

“Everybody is sitting in their cars, or trying to drive to open spaces away from buildings,” he said, speaking by telephone. “I imagine not a single person in Gaziantep is in their homes now.”

The death toll in Turkey is rising fast.

Officials said 23 people died in the province of Malatya, 17 in Sanliurfa, seven in Osmaniye, and six in Diyarbakir.

They said the toll could climb much higher because of the heavy damage.

A doctor in Syria’s Atmeh told The Associated Press news agency that at least 11 people have died in the northwestern town alone.

Dr Muheeb Qaddour added that many others were buried under the rubble.

“We fear that the deaths are in the hundreds,” he told AP.