More than 20,000 people have now been killed in Monday’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, although the United Nations has warned that the full extent of the devastation is still unclear.
Rescuers are still searching for survivors from the rubble, but hope is fading more than four days after the first quake.
Freezing conditions threaten the lives of thousands of survivors who are now without shelter, water or food.
Turkey’s president called the earthquake “the disaster of the century.”
A major international relief effort is gathering pace. On Thursday, the World Bank pledged $1.78 billion in aid to Turkey, including emergency finance to rebuild basic infrastructure and help those affected by the earthquake.
But the efforts of the 100,000 or so rescue workers on the ground have been hampered by a number of logistical obstacles, including a shortage of vehicles and damaged roads.
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that the full extent of the devastation was still “coming before our eyes”, particularly in Syria where a long-running civil war has ravaged the country.
On Thursday, the first UN humanitarian aid arrived in northwestern Syria via the Bab al-Hawa crossing in Idlib. The crossing is the only way for UN aid to reach the region without passing through areas controlled by Syrian government forces.
Mr Guterres promised that more help was on the way and urged the UN Security Council to allow supplies to flow through multiple border crossings.
“This is the moment of unity, it is not the moment to politicize or divide but it is obvious that we need mass support,” he said.
Munira Mohammed, a mother of four who fled Aleppo after the earthquake, told JEE News she was in desperate need of warmth and more supplies, saying: “Last night we couldn’t sleep because it was so cold. It’s very bad. “
The White Helmets rescue group said the only UN convoy that reached the area did not have special equipment to rescue people trapped under the rubble.
“This deeply disappoints us at a time when we are desperate for equipment to help save lives from the rubble,” the group said on Twitter.
Another disaster warning
Officials said on Thursday that 17,600 people have been killed in Turkey and at least 3,377 have died in Syria. A similar earthquake in northwestern Turkey in 1999 killed more than 17,000.
Tens of thousands of people displaced by the earthquakes are spending a fourth night in makeshift shelters to escape the scorching heat in Turkey and Syria.
Resat Gozlu, a survivor in southeastern Turkey who is now living with his family on the floor of a sports complex, said rescue workers did not arrive until three days after the quake.
Many people were trapped under the debris and others died of hypothermia, he said.
“If this continues, there could be serious health problems and diseases,” he told JEE News.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that a second humanitarian disaster will occur unless survivors get access to shelter, food, water and medicine “very quickly”.
The WHO’s regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Klug, told JEE News that the organization’s staff in Gaziantep, Turkey, had to sleep in cars because “there are still hundreds and hundreds of aftershocks”.
Dr Klug said communities in Syria depended on water reservoirs, which were the first to collapse. He said the reservoirs needed to be replaced or the country faced a cholera outbreak – which he said was a problem before the earthquake.
