After spending the past two days travelling alone towards the epicentre of the earthquake, the BBC's Anna Foster visited a destroyed tower block in Maras, Turkey, where it is thought no survivors are left beneath the rubble.

She says the conditions there are very difficult, and that although help is promised, many of the smaller towns in the area are yet to get any.

Following criticism that the Turkish state was slow to get to some of the affected areas after the earthquakes struck on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says there were some problems in the initial response.

However, he says operations are back to normal now.

"Initially there were issues at airports and on the roads, but today things are getting easier and tomorrow it will be easier still," Erdogan says.

"We have mobilised all our resources," he adds. "The state is doing its job."

The Turkish president is visiting southern Turkey - we'll bring you pictures when we have them.

We now believe more than 11,200 people have died following a massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday.

Turkish officials say 8,574 people have died in the country.

It's difficult to get figures from Syria, but we understand the number of confirmed deaths so far is 2,662.

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from Adana

As he waited for a delayed flight out of Istanbul Airport this week, Samet Yilmaz held up his phone, pointing to a photo of rubble. He said his brother, Ismail, was buried beneath it.

Samet lives in Bahrain, but has joined scores of people making the journey to southern Turkey in the wake of the earthquake.

Ismail, a 26-year-old supermarket cashier, had been staying with relatives in Hatay province on the Syrian border.

"I'm missing him so much. I have come from Bahrain to Turkey to search for him. He's my one and only brother," he told the BBC.

After arriving in Turkey, Samet waited for hours in Istanbul for a flight to take him to Adana in the south of the country, before beginning the hours-long drive to Hatay province.

With nowhere to stay, he warmed himself by a fire through the night, as he waited for daylight so he could begin the search for Ismail.

Read the full story here.

Image source, Reuters

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has travelled to the area worst-hit by the quake, news agencies report. He is set to visit Kahramanmaras and Hatay as well as Pazarcik, the quake's eipcentre.

Many have expressed anger at the government's apparent lack of action, with some people claiming that help is yet to reach them.

One woman, Arzu Dedeoglu, told a BBC reporter last night in the Numune district of Iskenderun, in southern Turkey, that her two nieces were stuck under the rubble, and that no help had arrived for a day.

"We have two kids under the rubble, Aysegul and Ilayda. They are gone now, I am sure they are already gone. Why couldn’t they have come earlier?”

Another survivor in the southern city of Antakya, Melek, 64, asked: "Where are the tents, where are food trucks?"

Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, she said: "We haven't seen any food distribution here, unlike previous disasters in our country. We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold here."

Others on social media said there have been serious inadequacies in the government's response, with some claiming some of the worst hit regions have been neglected.

Incredible stories and images are continuing to emerge from the many disaster sites.

In Hatay, Turkey, an eight-year-old boy has been rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building after some 52 hours.

Yigit Cakmak was carried from the building to his waiting mother, who greeted him with a big hug.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

A team of Ukrainian emergency workers has left for Turkey to take part in the earthquake rescue and clean-up operations there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Ukrainian specialists possess relevant experience in dealing with natural disasters.

The team consists of almost 90 rescue workers and includes 10 search-and-rescue dogs trained to find missing people, the national police chief says.

The complicated and painstaking work of rescuing people was laid bare this morning when Tom Bateman, the BBC's Middle East correspondent, was asked to stop his live broadcast so that rescuers could listen out for signs of life.

Shortly after starting his broadcast in front of a 10 storey building in Adana which came down during the initial earthquake, he, as well as everyone else in the vicinity, were asked to fall silent for a time.

Speaking afterwards, Tom said it was a moment "both of extreme anxiety but also of those tiny glimmers of hope".

Moments of hope are few and far between in areas devastated by Monday's earthquakes in northern Syria and southern Turkey.

But rescuers continue to fight to reach those trapped under rubble.

One young Syrian boy called Muhammed, trapped under rubble for nearly 45 hours in Hatay, was given water to drink from a bottle cap before he was pulled out.

"Well done Muhammed," Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu wrote on social media.

Image source, Reuters

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to visit Kahramanmaras and Hatay, the president's office has announced. He will also go to Pazarcik, epicentre of the quake.

He's declared a three-month state of emergency in the 10 provinces worst affected.

We've already had a number of updates on the death toll this morning and we've just heard that the total number of people killed has now passed 9,000.

The number of people killed in Turkey has risen to 6,957, according to the country's disaster agency.

It is difficult to verify the number in Syria, but its state media and a rescue group say about 2,500 people have died.

Melinda Young, Unicef’s senior emergency advisor for the whole of Syria, says getting aid into the country's north is very difficult at the moment.

Young says many roads are damaged, especially at the main border crossing, making it more difficult to get aid supplies sent across from Turkey to organisations working in Syria.

Many water systems in the area are also heavily damaged, she says, adding that it is having to be taken in trucks until systems are repaired. She says that can take at least six months.

She says the situation is particularly difficult for the children there, who have already gone through years of conflict, with many displaced during that period.

She adds that a cholera outbreak since September, the country's economic collapse, "and the fact we're coming into a drought.... all of these compounded crises come atop the trauma of the earthquake itself."

Kahramanmaras is close to the epicentre of the second quake.

Rows of buildings have collapsed into piles of debris and rescuers are picking through the rubble in bitterly cold temperatures.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Anna Foster
Reporting from Maras, Turkey

The scene here in Maras is one of more devastation than at any other point in the journey to get to the epicentre.

I spent the night next to an apartment building - it was a nine-storey block with four flats on each floor. Now it is just a pile of rubble, of twisted metal and broken glass.

It is not even a rescue effort anymore, this is a recovery effort because they know nobody is alive here.

They have a large digger that they use to carve out great chunks of this rubble.

Rescuers wrap bodies carefully in blankets and bring them out to the relatives that wait on the pavement.

They give them a moment and a chance to say goodbye before they are put in metal coffins and taken away.

Around 02:30 local time, after rescue efforts had stopped for the night, three relatives came over and tried to remove the rubble themselves - an impossible task.

So many families, so many individuals were personally hit by this.

Simon King
BBC weather presenter and meteorologist

Survivors in need of shelter would have really felt the colder weather on Tuesday night. It was freezing in Gaziantep, the epicentre of the first quake in Turkey, with the temperature getting down to -1C.

It was even colder further north near the mountainous regions where the thermometer went down to -5C.

And it’s going to get even colder across southern Turkey and northern Syria.

Through the rest of the week the overnight temperatures will be down to -7C in Gaziantep. Even lower toward the mountains.

More than 8,700 people are known to have been killed in Turkey and Syria following Monday's earthquake.

The death toll in Turkey has risen to 6,234, according to the country's disaster agency.

It is difficult to verify the number in Syria, but its state media and a rescue group say more than 2,500 people have been killed.A total of 1,250 people have died in the government-held region, said the Syrian health minister.

The White Helmet, which operates in the rebel-controlled area, say the death toll has risen to more than 1,280.

It's just past 06:00 in the United Kingdom, and just after 09:00 in Turkey and Syria. If you're just joining us, here's a quick recap of the latest developments:

More than 7,800 people have died across both countries after two huge earthquakes on Monday, amid warnings from the World Health Organization that the toll may rise dramatically as rescuers find more victims. More than 23 million people could be affected by the disaster

Emergency workers worked through another freezing-cold night, in a desperate race against the clock to save people trapped beneath rubble after thousands of buildings collapsed

Relatives of victims armed with pickaxes and crowbars joined frantic rescue efforts in one of the worst-hit Turkish cities, as anguished families said rescue services took too long to respond in some areas

A three-month state of emergency has been declared in Turkey by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 10 provinces worst affected by the quake

Countries around the world are sending support to help the rescue efforts, including specialist teams, sniffer dogs and equipment, including Italy, the US, Israel and Taiwan

Stay with us as we bring you the latest on this story.

Image source, Getty Images

Anger is mounting over an "earthquake tax" levied by the Turkish government more than two decades ago in the wake of a massive quake.The estimated 88bn lira ($4.6b; £3.8b) was meant to have been spent on disaster prevention and the development of emergency services. In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed in a powerful quake that hit northwestern Turkey.

Questions about the "special communication tax" - as the authorities call it - are asked every time there is an earthquake in Turkey. But the government has never publicly explained how the money is spent, according to BBC Turkish.

“Where have all our taxes gone, collected since 1999?”, Celal Deniz, 61, said to AFP. His brother and nephews remain trapped under rubble.

Kathy Long
Reporting from Istanbul

As we have reported, flights at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul continue to be delayed and cancelled with planes being diverted because of icy runways and snowfall.

Umay, 25, a student in Ghent, Belgium, and her cousin, Melike, 24, are anxiously waiting for a different reason. Melike’s mother - Umay’s aunt - is critically ill in intensive care after being rescued 22 hours after an earthquake struck. She was trapped by a metal door. Her injuries are severe. The cousins are from the southern Hatay area, where many of their relatives live.

They are thankful the rest of their family are safe and well with places to stay but many of their friends are not so lucky. “We can’t contact our neighbours, they just don’t answer. They had three kids. All we have are these pictures…” She shows video of toys and books, coated in dust among rubble.

Melike, a trainee solicitor in Istanbul, is hoping she can tell her mother the good news - on Monday, the same day as the two earthquakes struck, she received confirmation that she had her licence to practise.

A dramatic video has emerged of the moment a family of six was pulled alive from rubble in Idlib, Syria.

Crowds erupted into cheers as the two adults and four children were rescued and ushered to waiting ambulances.