Turkey-Syria earthquake updates: Toddler rescued from rubble

The death toll in southern Turkey has risen to 17,674 and the number of injured has hit 72,879, Vice President Fuat Oktay says.

The US has announced an initial $85m package in emergency relief.

The US Agency for International Development said in a statement that the funding will go to partners on the ground “to deliver urgently needed aid for millions of people”, including food, shelter and emergency health services.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says he is heading to Syria.

“On my way to Syria, where WHO is supporting essential health care in the areas affected by the recent earthquake, building on our long-standing work across the country,” the WHO chief tweeted.

“The civilians are just using their hands.”

Residents of Jindires, one of Syria’s worst-affected areas, are left using their hands to search for survivors beneath collapsed buildings and are pleading for international help after this week’s devastating earthquakes.

The World Bank has announced $1.78bn in aid to Turkey to help relief and recovery efforts.

“We are providing immediate assistance and preparing a rapid assessment of the urgent and massive needs on the ground,” said World Bank President David Malpass in a statement.

Bader Khalif from the town of Jenderes in the southern countryside of Aleppo, Syria told Al Jazeera that civilians have been helping to bury the dead who were killed in the earthquake.

“From the morning until now, we have buried about 100 people, and there are still bodies under the rubble,” he said.

Greece has sent thousands of tents, beds and blankets to Turkey to help the hundreds of thousands of homeless earthquake survivors in an act of solidarity with a neighbour that is a NATO ally but also a historic foe.

Greece plans to provide 80 tonnes of assistance, which also includes blankets and medical supplies, its civil protection ministry said. Commercial flights carrying part of the aid landed in Adana, Turkey, early on Thursday, with the operation expected to conclude on Friday.

“We have brought medicines, medical supplies and essentials to relieve a bit of the pain of the quake-afflicted people,” said Greek Civil Protection Minister Christos Stylianides, who escorted the aid to Adana. “It’s time we all show our feelings of humanism.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to discuss how the United States can continue to provide assistance in Turkey and Syria following this week’s earthquakes, the US Department of State says.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the US will continue to demand unhindered humanitarian access to Syria and urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to immediately allow aid through all border crossings.

The death toll in Turkey has climbed to 17,406, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca says.

Rescue workers sent by Bern to Turkey have pulled earthquake victims out of rubble alive, the government says, a first in two decades of Swiss participation in international disaster response work.

Switzerland dispatched a team of 80 rescue workers hours after a magnitude 7.8 quake hit Turkey and Syria. The foreign ministry said Switzerland’s team had so far rescued nine people.

“We can confirm that this marks indeed the first time in 20 years that Swiss rescue workers sent to assist with catastrophes abroad have found people alive,” foreign ministry spokesman Valentin Clivaz told the AFP news agency.

He confirmed a report by public broadcaster RTS that detailed how the Swiss rescuers on Wednesday evening found an elderly woman in a collapsed building in Hatay before saving a family of four, including a baby. Others had been rescued earlier in the week, it said.

The death toll from earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria has climbed above 20,000, a tally that is expected to rise further as crews comb the rubble of thousands of toppled buildings.

Turkey’s disaster agency raised the country’s confirmed death toll to 17,134, up from 16,546 just a few hours earlier.

The number of lives lost in neighbouring Syria stands at 3,317.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is calling for more aid access to northwestern Syria from Turkey as he seeks an expanded mandate from the UN Security Council to allow UN help to be delivered through more than one border crossing.

Speaking to reporters, Guterres said now is the time to explore all possible avenues to get aid and personnel into the rebel-held area affected by the earthquakes.

“Many non-UN relief agencies are already delivering through other crossings,” Guterres told reporters. “I will be very happy if, in relation to the UN, there will be the possibility to do it also in as many crossings as possible.”

Relief is being coordinated across Turkey days after two earthquakes hit 10 southeastern cities with more than 13 million inhabitants.

Seismologists say Monday’s disaster was the worst shallow inland earthquake of the 21st century. Many of the structures along the 200km (125-mile) fault line collapsed. The scale of the disaster is one of the biggest tests that Erdogan and his government have yet faced.

Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu has more from Turkey’s Disaster Management Crisis Centre in Ankara.

EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic has visited Gaziantep, Turkey, as the bloc makes more earthquake aid available to Syria.

Tents, sleeping bags, mattresses, beds, food and clothing were among the aid offered by EU countries to Syria after the country asked the bloc for help on Wednesday.

The EU had previously made $3.8m in emergency funding available to aid organisations to address urgent needs in Syria, including shelter, water and sanitation.

A request from the UN’s World Food Programme for additional help will allow further EU aid to be channelled to survivors, a statement said.

Rescue workers have some good news in Adana, Turkey, as they work around the clock at the site of a 12-storey building that collapsed in Monday’s earthquakes.

They found 45-year-old Akgun Eker alive after she was trapped under rubble for more than three days.

Ukrainian rescue experts, more used to emergencies in a war zone at home, have brought their skills to Turkey to search flattened buildings for survivors, erect tents and offer first aid.

“There is a war in our country, but we understand that we have to help, and this aid is mutual. There is no other way to do it,” said Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, a spokesman for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

Kyiv has sent 88 people to Turkey to help with the disaster. The team includes specialists in search and rescue operations, doctors, dog handlers and firefighters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have spoken about the situation in Turkey in a phone call.

Cavusoglu and Blinken discussed continuing relief operations in the affected areas.

Germany will increase the amount of humanitarian assistance it provides in Syria by 26 million euros ($28m) to respond to the growing needs of Syrians.

A statement from the German embassy in Beirut said the funds were needed “especially in the affected areas in the northwestern parts of the country”, home to many Syrians displaced during a 12-year war.

“Germany can build on close ties with international organizations and NGOs in northwestern Syria, as it has already been providing extensive humanitarian assistance there,” the statement said.

The UK has said it is committing additional funding – at least three million pounds ($3.65m) – to support search and rescue operations and emergency relief in Syria following earthquakes in the region.

“Given the magnitude of the earthquakes and difficulties in accessing affected areas in North West Syria, the UK will be providing The White Helmets with additional funding to aid their major search-and-rescue operations,” the UK said in a statement.