Turkey-Syria earthquake: As it happened

Turkish rescuers pulled at least six people from the rubble on Tuesday, eight days after Turkey's devastating earthquake, as the aid efforts begin to focus on helping survivors find shelter and food. 

The six rescued survivors include two brothers, aged 17 and 21, pulled from an apartment block in Kahramanmaras province. 

Local media said rescuers freed a woman and man in the southern city of Hatay. 

CNN Turk also reported rescuers removed 18-year-old Muhammed Cafer from the rubble 198 hours later. 

At least 31,974 people were killed by the two powerful earthquakes that jolted southern Turkey on 6 February, the country's disaster agency AFAD said on Tuesday, in its first update since Monday. 

The first UN delegation has entered northwestern Syria since the double earthquake hit Turkey and Syria last week leaving thousands dead. 

More than 35,000 people were killed in both countries by the disaster, which also left thousands homeless.

In the government-controlled part of Syria, at least 1,414 people have died, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). Meanwhile, the rebel-run areas have reported at least 3,160 deaths.

"A multi-agency mission has gone this morning from the Turkiye side across the border crossing... It’s largely an assessment mission,” the World Food Programme’s Syria director, Kenn Crossley, told AFP in Geneva.

Only a single crossing point - Bab al-Hawa - has been open to humanitarian personnel since the 6 February earthquakes struck across the border region of southern Turkey and northwest Syria.

“I welcome the decision today by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to open the two crossing points of Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee from Turkey to northwest Syria for an initial period of three months to allow for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid,” António Guterres said in a statement.

The twin earthquakes that claimed at least 35,000 lives in Turkey have triggered a new debate in Ankara on whether it is possible to postpone the upcoming general elections to a later date.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are traditionally scheduled for June, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month decided to bring them forward to May to attract more voters to the ballot boxes. The move, he thought, could put him in an advantageous position after boosting social spending that increased his popularity.

However, the earthquakes, which have damaged 10 provinces, home to more than 10 million people, have pushed Turkish ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials to reassess the situation.

Read more: 

Turkey earthquake: Could elections be postponed?

A Saudi Arabian plane carrying aid to quake-hit Syria has landed in the country’s second largest city of Aleppo.

The Saudi plane, carrying 35 tonnes of aid, landed in Syria’s Aleppo International Airport on Tuesday, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

"This is the first plane from Saudi Arabia to land on Syrian territory in more than 10 years," an official speaking to AFP said on condition of anonymity.

Saudi Arabia broke off relations with President Bashar al-Assad's government in 2012 and backed rebels in earlier stages of the war.

Riyadh has pledged aid to both rebel-held and government-controlled areas of the country.

In the government-controlled part of Syria, at least 1,414 people have died, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). Meanwhile, the rebel-run areas have reported at least 3,160 deaths.

At least 31,643 people have been killed in Turkey, the country's disaster agency said on Monday, since then the numbers have not been updated but they are widely expected to increase.

More than 198 hours after last week's devastating earthquake, 18-year-old Muhammed Cafer Cetin was pulled from the rubble by rescue teams in the city of Adiyaman on Tuesday, reported Turkey's national broadcaster TRT. 

An emotional anchor man described the moments the teenager was pulled out of the rubble on a stretcher. Emergency workers took the young man, who was conscious, to the ambulance. 

In Turkey's Kahramanmaras province, another badly affected area, two more men were rescued alive from the rubble of an apartment block. Images on CNN Turk showed rescue workers carrying the two people, strapped onto stretchers, to waiting ambulances.

Turkey's worst earthquake in almost a century has left a trail of destruction that could cost Ankara up to $84.1bn, according to a report by the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation. 

The breakdown of the cost was estimated at $70.8bn from the repair of thousands of homes, $10.4bn from the loss of national income and $2.9bn from the loss of working days.

In the coming months and years the main challenges the report said would be rebuilding housing, transmission lines and infrastructure, and meeting the short, medium and long-term shelter needs of the hundreds of thousands left homeless.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the state will complete housing reconstruction within a year and the government was preparing a programme to "make the country stand up again".

Some 13.4 million people live in the 10 provinces by hit by the quake, or 15 percent of Turkey's population, and it produces close to 10 percent of GDP.

Turkey is considering extending the closure of the Istanbul stock market beyond Wednesday, amid the continued fallout of deadly earthquakes that put the benchmark BIST index into freefall last week.

Trading is expected to resume on 15 February, but officials could delay the reopening, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing two unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.

The deliberations come as Turkey continues to grapple with the fallout of the quakes which have left at least 31,643 people in the country dead, according to Turkey's Afad disaster agency. 

Read more: 

Turkey earthquake: Ankara considers extending stock-market closure

Hello readers. A week after two 7-plus magnitude earthquakes devastated Turkey and Syria, leaving more than 35,000 people dead and tens of thousands of others injured, search and rescue teams have shifted away from finding survivors to locating bodies of the deceased.

The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors on Monday to discuss the situation of aid access to northwest Syria, which has received limited assistance compared to Turkey and the areas in Syria controlled by the government of Bashar al-Assad. UN aid chief Martin Griffiths also met with the Syrian president on Monday.

Assad said later on Monday that he would agree to allow the UN access to two more border crossings with Turkey to allow aid to come into the country, which would help deliver crucial supplies to the rebel-held northwest.

Our Istanbul correspondent Levent Kemal reported that the Turkish government is considering relocating hundreds of thousands of Syrians from 10 of the country's provinces after the twin earthquakes.

With the death toll expected to rise even further, it is likely to surpass the figures from Turkey's 1939 earthquake, which would make it the deadliest in modern Turkish history.

MEE is taking a pause in coverage for now but will pick back up soon. For the latest updates, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to let the United Nations deliver aid to Syria through two more border crossings from Turkey for three months, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told a closed-door Security Council meeting on Monday, according to diplomats.

Griffiths met with Assad in Damascus on Monday, a week after a devastating earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 35,00 people in both countries.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Monday and discussed the country's need for assistance, according to Syrian state media agency Sana.

Sana reported that the two talked about "urgent" humanitarian needs following the earthquake, which has killed more than 3,000 people in Syria.

"President al-Assad affirmed the need for bringing in the urgent aid to all areas in Syria including those that are subjected to occupation and the dominance of the armed terrorist groups," Sana reported.

"The president also stressed the necessity for the international efforts to concentrate on reconstructing infrastructure in Syria as this issue is an urgent need for the stability of the Syrian people and the return of Syrian refugees to their cities and regions," Sana reported.

Earlier on Monday, the UN official said that the international body would help move aid from government-controlled regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest of the country.

"We'll have assistance moving from here to the northwest. But the northwest is only one part of Syria as you know,” Griffiths said.