Rescue teams were scrambling Tuesday to find survivors in the rubble of thousands of buildings that collapsed in a 7.8-magnitude quake and multiple aftershocks that rocked eastern Turkey and neighboring Syria, with more bodies found and bringing the total death toll to more than 5,000.
Countries from around the world sent teams to assist in rescue efforts and Turkey’s disaster management agency said more than 24,400 emergency personnel were already on the ground. But with the vastness of the territory affected by the quake the day before and some 6,000 buildings collapsed in the country alone, their efforts have been overwhelmed.
Attempts to find more survivors were also hampered by freezing temperatures and nearly 200 aftershocks, which added danger to the search among the unstable structures.
Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press that he could hear his mother’s voice under the rubble of a collapsed building in the city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, but that his and others’ efforts to get deeper into the ruins had been futile in the absence of rescue equipment and heavy machinery to help them.
“If we could lift the concrete sheeting we could get to her,” he said. “My mother is 70 years old, she won’t be able to stand this for long.”
Across Hatay province, just southwest of the epicenter of the quake, authorities said as many as 1,500 buildings were destroyed and many people reported that their relatives were trapped under the wreckage rescuers came to their aid.
In areas where teams were present, occasional cheers could be heard during the night coinciding with the rescue of survivors.
The quake, whose epicenter was in the southeastern Turkish province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents in Damascus, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon, running into the streets and was felt as far away as Cairo, Egypt.
For its part, the NGO Doctors Without Borders confirmed Tuesday that one of its workers died after his home collapsed in Syria’s Idlib province, and that others had lost family members in the tragedy.
“We are shocked and saddened by the impact of this disaster on the thousands of people affected, including our colleagues and their families,” said Sebastien Gay, the head of MSF’s mission in Syria.
According to Gay, health centers in northern Syria were overwhelmed and medical staff were working “around the clock to respond to the huge number of injured.”
In Hatay province, thousands of people took shelter in sports halls or fairgrounds, while others spent the night in the open, wrapped in blankets and around campfires.
Turkey has a large number of soldiers deployed in the region bordering Syria and ordered the army to assist in the operation, including setting up tents for those left homeless and a field hospital in Hatay. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said a humanitarian aid brigade based in Ankara has been mobilized, in addition to eight military search and rescue teams.
A Navy ship docked Tuesday at the port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transfer survivors in need of medical attention to the nearby city of Mersin. A dense plume of black smoke billowed from another part of the port, where firefighters had not yet been able to quell a fire sparked among cargo containers toppled by the tremor.
In Gaziantep, a Turkish provincial capital some 33 kilometers (20 miles) from the epicenter, people took shelter in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.
According to the country’s vice president, Fuat Oktay, the total number of dead in Turkey rose to 3,419, with another 20,534 people injured.
In areas of Syria controlled by the Damascus government, 812 people were reported dead, in addition to some 1,450 wounded, according to its Health Ministry. In the Syrian rebel-held northwest of the country, Syrian Civil Defense, the opposition paramedic group known as the White Helmets that is leading the rescue operation, reported the death of at least 790 people and more than 2,200 wounded.
The latest figures bring the total death toll in the two countries to 5,021 people.
Authorities fear the death toll will continue to rise as rescuers search for survivors amid the tangles of metal and concrete scattered across a region ravaged by the 12-year Syrian civil war and the ensuing refugee crisis.
As part of the latest international pledges of aid, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said he was getting ready to quickly mobilize a 60-person search-and-rescue team, along with medical supplies.
Pakistan’s government sent a plane loaded with relief goods and 50 rescuers early Tuesday, and said there would be daily aid flights to Syria and Turkey starting Wednesday. India announced the dispatch of two search teams with trained dogs and medical personnel.
A previous version of this dispatch was corrected to clarify that the combined death toll was 5,021, not 5,102.
Alsayed reported from Azmarin, Syria, and Fraser from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writers Zeynep Bilginsoy and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul; Bassem Mroue and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Lebanon; Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea; and Riazat Butt in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.