Rescue operations are still ongoing on both sides of the border (Picture: Getty)
The death toll from Monday’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has now risen beyond 30,000.
Six days after the disaster, thousands of survivors have been pulled from the piles of rubble that were once apartment buildings full of life.
It has now been confirmed that 29,605 people have died in Turkey, while another 3,553 have been killed in Syria.
Rescue efforts continue on both sides of the border, but resident believe valuable time has been lost during the narrow window for finding people alive beneath the wreckage.
Others, particularly in the southern Hatay province near the Syrian border, say that Turkey’s government was late in delivering assistance to the hardest-hit region for what they suspect are both political and religious reasons.
In Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey, Elif Busra Ozturk stood outside a flattened building on Saturday where her uncle and aunt were trapped – believed dead.
The bodies of two of her cousins had already been discovered under the rubble.
‘For three days, I waited outside for help. No one came,’ she said.
‘There were so few rescue teams that they could only intervene in places they were sure there were people alive.’
In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving thousands of people homeless for a second time after they were displaced by the civil war.
But the region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.
‘We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria,’ United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted from the Turkey-Syria border, where only a single border crossing is open for UN aid supplies.
‘They rightly feel abandoned,’ he said, adding that he was focused on addressing that swiftly.
