The death toll rose to 35,224 as officials said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,581 in Syria
\n ANTAKYA
\nThe toll from last week\u2019s earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose above 35,000 on Monday, as rescue teams started to wind down the search for survivors and the aid effort shifted to hundreds of thousands of people made homeless.
\nOne week after the 7.8-magnitude tremor, Turkish media reported a handful of people were still being pulled from the rubble and increasingly desperate conditions for survivors battling lack of hygiene, toilets and water.
\nThe confirmed death toll rose to 35,224 as officials and medics said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,581 in Syria after the February 6 earthquake, the fifth deadliest since the start of the 21st century.
\nThe United Nations has decried the failure to ship desperately needed aid to war-torn regions of Syria and warned that the toll is set to rise higher as experts caution that hopes for finding people alive dim with each passing day.
\n\u201cI could not do anything,\u201d said Syrian nurse anaesthetist Abdelbaset Khalil whose wife and two daughters were killed by the earthquake while he was already at work.
\nAs hundreds of patients flooded into his hospital in the city of Harim in the rebel-held Idlib province on the border with Turkey, he worked through his grief.
\nThe first day \u201cpassed like 50 years\u201d, he said.
\nIn Kahramanmaras, close to the epicentre, 30,000 tents have been installed, 48,000 people are sheltering in schools and another 11,500 in sports halls, Turkey said.
\nMillions \u2018need to be fed\u2019
\n\u201cSend any stuff you can because there are millions of people here and they all need to be fed,\u201d appealed Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu late Sunday.
\nWhile hundreds of rescue teams were still working, efforts had ended in seven parts of the province, he added.
\nIn Antakya, clean-up teams started to evacuate rubble and erect basic toilets as the telephone network started to come back in parts of the town, an AFP reporter said.
\nThe city was patrolled by a strong police and military presence which authorities deployed to prevent looting following several incidents over the weekend.
\nHatice Goz, a volunteer psychologist in Turkey\u2019s Hatay province, said she has been fielding \u201ca barrage of calls\u201d from frantic parents looking for missing children.
\nTurkish Vice President Fuat Oktay late Sunday said 108,000 buildings were damaged across the quake-hit zone with 1.2 million people being housed in student accommodation and 400,000 people evacuated from the affected region.
\nAid packages, mainly clothes, were opened and spread across the streets in Hatay province, according to NTV. One video showed aid workers throwing clothes randomly into a crowd as people tried to grab whatever they could.
\nOn Monday, the UN\u2019s relief chief Martin Griffiths visited Aleppo, where more than 200,000 people have been left homeless by the earthquake, according to the WHO.
\nHomeless in Aleppo
\nA convoy with supplies for northwest Syria arrived via Turkey, but Griffiths said more was needed for millions whose homes were destroyed.
\nIn Syria the toll has not changed for several days and is expected to rise.
\n\u201cWe have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn\u2019t arrived,\u201d Griffiths tweeted on Sunday.
\nSupplies have been slow to arrive in Syria, where years of conflict have ravaged the healthcare system, and parts of the country remain under the control of rebels battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is under Western sanctions.
\n\u201cOur focus now is on helping the Syrian people,\u201d said UN envoy Geir Pedersen in Damascus.
\nA 10-truck UN convoy has crossed into northwest Syria via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, according to an AFP correspondent, carrying shelter kits, plastic sheeting, rope, blankets, mattresses and carpets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The death toll rose to 35,224 as officials said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,581 in Syria ANTAKYA The toll from last week\u2019s earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose above 35,000 on Monday, as rescue teams started to wind down the search for survivors and the aid effort shifted to hundreds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n