Even as the death toll in Turkey and Syria has risen to more than 43,000, search teams in southern Turkey have rescued a few people who were trapped in the debris, including a 12-year-old boy.
Even as rescuers rush to arrive, it's often locals who can best offer immediate help, experts say. And they say governments in devastated areas often fail to realize the scope and respond immediately.
With so many killed suddenly in the quake, Turkey faces the challenge of burying tens of thousands of people. Multiple funerals are happening at once and the process of burying the dead is constant.
As volunteers continue digging through the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, the siblings of a woman found dead with her four children are now awaiting news of their mother and another sister.
Videos have surfaced in Turkish media of the president in 2019 praising a policy that let builders off the hook for skirting safety codes that could have made buildings more quake resistant.
People buried under rubble in southern Turkey continue to defy the odds, surviving freezing weather and a week without water. A 40-year-old woman was pulled alive in Gaziantep province early Monday.
In northern Syria, people already displaced by civil war are now suffering from the effects of this week's earthquake. But aid has been unable to reach them.
As rescuers still pulled some from the rubble, Turkish officials detained those allegedly involved in constructing buildings that toppled down and crushed their occupants.
In the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye, people squeeze into tents or sleep in cars near their damaged homes nearly a week after the massive earthquake struck.
Rescue crews pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the quake in Turkey and Syria surpassed 28,000.
In a camp in Gaziantep and in makeshift settlements in the fields around it, survivors of Monday's quake say they do not have enough food, water, heating or basic amenities to keep themselves alive.
Critics are laying into the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing it of incompetence in its response to the massive quake and misplacing tax revenues meant for dealing with disasters.
Rescue workers pressed their search Thursday across Turkey and Syria for survivors from this week's massive earthquake and aftershocks as the window to find people alive began to close.
Hope is fading for finding survivors after Monday's devastating earthquake. But widely shared footage of volunteers pulling people alive from rubble in northwest Syria has lifted spirits.
A 1.5 million square-ft. zone of Dubai known as International Humanitarian City is the world's largest aid hub, with warehouses for U.N. agencies, Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations and others.
