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The BBC reported a Turkish journalist, based in Istanbul as saying that many people are still trapped under the rubble and waiting to be rescued.
“People are still under the [collapsed] buildings, they need help,” the news outlet quotes Ibrahim Haskologlu as saying.
According to him, he and other people have received videos and voice notes from trapped victims telling their locations to facilitate their rescue.
Haskologlu who is originally from Malatya, one of the areas heavily affected by the earthquakes that erupted on Monday, February 6, 2023, said he was itching to return home to give the least assistance he could to the rescue mission.
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“They’re telling us where they are and ‘we can’t do anything,’" Haskologlu told the BBC.
Reports say no fewer than 3,549 people have died, 22,168 injured and more than 8,000 people rescued so far, while search and rescue teams continue their work fervently.
Turkey and Syria were hit by a devastating earthquake on Monday which left destruction and debris on each side of the border.
Being one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the region in a century, the disaster shook residents from their beds at around 4 a.m., sending tremors as far away as Lebanon and Israel.
The epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude quake was 23 kilometres (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, at a depth of 24.1 kilometres (14.9 miles), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.