Quake toll soars past 11K

Istanbul: The death toll from an earthquake in Turkiye and Syria has passed 11,000 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is visiting the quake zone. He said the fatalities in Turkiye alone have passed 8,500.

He conceded shortfalls in the response during the first day but said the situation has improved since then. We won't allow any of our citizens to be left in the streets, he said. Thinly stretched rescue teams worked through the night in Turkiye and Syria, pulling more bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled by a catastrophic earthquake. The death toll rose Wednesday to more than 9,500, making the quake the deadliest in more than a decade.Turkiye's disaster management agency said the country's death toll had risen to 7,108, bringing the overall total to 9,638, including fatalities reported in neighbouring Syria, since Monday's earthquake and multiple aftershocks.

The death toll in government-held areas of Syria has climbed to 1,250, with 2,054 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,280 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets, with more than 2,600 injured.

That surpassed the 8,800 killed in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal in 2015.

Amid calls for the government to send more help to the disaster zone, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to travel to town of Pazarcik, the epicenter of the quake, and to the worst-hit province of Hatay on Wednesday.

Turkiye now has some 60,000 aid personnel in the quake-hit zone, but with the devastation so widespread many are still waiting for help.

Nearly two days after the magnitude 7.8 quake struck southeastern Turkiye and northern Syria, rescuers pulled a 3-year-old boy, Arif Kaan, from beneath the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city not far from the epicenter.

Search teams from more than two dozen countries joined the Turkish emergency personnel, and aid pledges poured in.

But with devastation spread multiple several cities and towns - some isolated by Syria's ongoing conflict - voices crying from within mounds of rubble fell silent, and despair grew from those still waiting for help.

In Syria, the shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region wracked by the country's 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.

Turkiye is home to millions of refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country's last opposition-held enclave, where millions rely on humanitarian aid.

As many as 23 million people could be affected in the quake-hit region, according to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization, who called it a crisis on top of multiple crises.

Many survivors in Turkiye have had to sleep in cars, outside or in government shelters. Erdogan said 13 million of the country's 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkiye, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, authorities said. In Syria, aid efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western sanctions linked to the war. The United Nations said it was exploring all avenues to get supplies to the rebel-held northwest.