James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

Image source, Reuters

The British government has increased its funding to the White Helmets civil defence organisation, which operates in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, to help it tackle the aftermath of the earthquake.

It is giving the White Helmets an additional £800,000 ($963,000) - that is on top of the £2.25m the UK gives them each year.

The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, told MPs the UK would also provide help within Syria via the International Medical Corps, Save the Children and UN agencies.

Mr Cleverly said: “The Conflict Stability and Security Fund will provide an uplift to the opposition Syria Civil Defence – commonly known as the White Helmets – to support their emergency response operations across north west Syria.”

The UK has little direct access to north-west Syria where territorial control is largely divided between government, opposition groups and other militias.

Shocking drone footage has revealed the extent of the destruction in the southernmost province of Hatay, which borders Syria.

Entire buildings have been toppled, while others are reduced to rubble. Smoke rises from parts of the debris amid an eerie silence.

At least 872 people have died in Hatay, amid reports of equipment shortages for rescuers.

We all feel like we want to help, but we need to avoid overwhelming those affected with items they do not need, a disaster response expert has said.

“People will try and send the most unhelpful items to scenes,” Prof Lucy Easthope told BBC World News.

“People will pile minibuses full of old jumpers and basically the stuff they’ve cleared out from their back bedroom.

“The most important, helpful thing at this moment is money. There are non-governmental organisations and charities and governmental organisations all powering-in now to help,” she said.

“What they need not just now, but for years ahead, is cash.

“It’s not from a place of trying to be difficult or trying to supress goodwill, but I can’t impress on people enough and I tweet about this a lot, how unhelpful unwanted donated items are.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent condolences to his Syrian counterpart over the deadly earthquake that has killed nearly 8,000 in Turkey and Syria.

"I am sure that under your leadership, the Syrian government and the people will overcome damage from the quake as quickly as possible and the lives of affected people will be stabilized," Mr Kim said in a voice message to Syria's president Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, state media reported.

Meanwhile, South Korea said it would offer $5m in emergency humanitarian assistance to Turkey, and dispatch 110 workers to support its search and rescue operations. Medical supplies will also be delivered, a spokesperson from its foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Image source, Reuters

The window for finding survivors is narrowing as the death toll from the powerful earthquake is now nearing 8,000. Here are some photos from Tuesday's rescue operations.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, EPA

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Natalie Roberts, UK executive director of Doctors Without Borders, has a team in Syria. She told the BBC that they unfortunately lost a colleague in the rubble.

"It’s a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe. In these parts of Turkey, in places like Gaziantep, there are millions of Syrian refugees living often in not very robust accommodation. It's a recipe for disaster."

Although there is a window of time straight after the earthquake to deal with the acute injuries of those who get out of the rubble, Roberts said, people who remain under the rubble for too long suffer from "crush" injuries that can lead to kidney failure. "We anticipate that in the coming weeks," she said.

And the cold is exacerbating the situation, because people risk being exposed to very low temperatures as they're too scared to go back home. "We need to think quickly about robust living conditions, so that they won’t succumb to, for example, another cholera outbreak or other diseases that could come from this situation."

Northern Syria is going to suffer from the consequences of the earthquakes for "months and months", she said.

Image source, Yeni Malatyaspor

Turkish goalkeeper Ahmet Eyup Turkaslan has died following Monday's earthquakes in his home country, his club Yeni Malatyaspor has confirmed.

Nearly 8,000 people have lost their lives in Turkey and Syria following the earthquakes.

"Our goalkeeper, Ahmet Eyup Turkaslan, lost his life after being under the collapse of the earthquake. Rest in peace," the club said on Twitter, external.

"We will not forget you, beautiful person," it added.

Turkaslan, 28, played six times for Turkish second division club Yeni Malatyaspor after joining in 2021.

Read more here.

Image source, Reuters

Earlier (see post at 18:16) we mentioned a fire raging in the Turkish port of Iskenderun as a result of the earthquakes. The authorities now say it has been extinguished.

Hundreds of shipping containers had caught fire sending a massive cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. Planes and helicopters helped fight the blaze.

Major shipping firms had started diverting vessels to other ports around the region.

Image source, EPA

Aid should be sent into northern Syria through humanitarian and international groups rather than any of the factions competing for control of the area, a former UN aid chief has told the BBC.

Speaking to the PM programme, Jan Egeland said aid should not be going to “any of the political actors in Syria, neither in the government-controlled nor in the opposition-controlled areas”.

Parts of the area in northern Syria worst affected by the earthquakes are among those still controlled by armed opposition groups in the country's civil war.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has called on European countries to send aid but since the war began in 2011 the government has repeatedly been accused of withholding aid from opposition-controlled areas as part of an attempt to force them to surrender.

Egeland said it was a "very, very complex political landscape" that was difficult for humanitarian organisations to navigate. He added: “I think full aid should be going through non-governmental organisations - UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent system.”

He said much of the area hit by the earthquakes was essentially a “cluster of refugee camps”.

“There are millions of people displaced by war in this zone in northern Syria and in southern Turkey,” he said.

“This really very exhausted population… has now to rescue people with their bare hands out of the rubble because there is so little resources, so little aid coming to this region.”

The death toll from the devastating earthquake has now jumped to more than 7,800 people. A breakdown of the figures by AFP news agency says 5,894 people died in Turkey and at least 1,932 are reported dead in Syria.

Fundanur Öztürk
BBC Turkish, reporting from Iskenderun

We arrived in the Numune district of Iskenderun, southern Turkey, at dawn. It was very quiet, even though there were a lot of people on the streets, trying to get warm next to fires they had made.

Suddenly a woman named Arzu Dedeoglu, whose two nieces are still under the rubble, started to scream: “You are too late, too late!”

She was screaming at rescue workers who were trying to save her nieces along with many others trapped under the rubble. The workers stopped for a minute, and Dedeoglu begged them to keep going.

She told us that help had not arrived for a day and they had had to arrange to use their own dipper dredger, but officials had not let them use it.

“We waited until late, but no-one came. And they didn’t let us use our own [digger]," she said. "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?”

They were still waiting for news when we left.

Image source, Getty Images

Aid is being stepped up in southern Turkey and northern Syria, after a huge earthquake devastated the region, leaving more than 7,000 people dead.

National governments of many countries - including the UK, the US, China and Russia - are providing aid, including search and rescue experts.

In the UK, the British Red Cross was one of the country's first major charities to launch its appeal. It is working in conjunction with the Turkish Red Crescent and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and is already on the ground "providing urgent support during these critical hours" and evacuating people to safety.

Oxfam is another large charity to have launched an appeal. It said it would focus on providing "protection, water and sanitation, shelter and food", while also assessing the longer-term needs of people in the aftermath of so much destruction.

Organisations including Save the Children, Unicef and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) have all launched appeals following the earthquake.

Read more here.

Kathy Long
Reporting from Istanbul

In Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul, the frustration is growing. Families desperate to be reunited with loved ones - or join the search for them - are increasingly protesting as flights to the south of the country continue to be delayed and cancelled.

Fights and shouting have broken out, with airport staff under pressure to find solutions when planes have been diverted and cannot land or take off as the runways have iced over and snow continues to fall.

One man grabbed the microphone and shouted at airport staff: “Where is the authority? We need planes to Adana, not Bodrum. Prioritise flights to Adana!” His words were greeted with applause and whistles by other travellers in the waiting area.

Rescue teams are also here, patiently hoping for flights to take them closer to doing their job. One team from a large shipping company, Poliport, all dressed in red emergency uniforms, told us that they are all volunteers, all specially trained and ready to go. But they need to get to Adana and onwards.

New satellite images show the devastation caused by the earthquake which hit Turkey and Syria in the early hours of Monday.

The images, taken today, show the significant damage done to buildings in the southern cities of Islahiye, Nurdagi and Duzici.

Image source, Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Image source, Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Image source, Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Image source, Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Hélène Daouphars
Reporting from north London

Thousands of people made their way to Fountayne Road in Tottenham, north London, on Tuesday to donate clothes, nappies and blankets for those affected by the earthquakes in Turkey.

Hussein Sanaci is a Turkish citizen who has lived in London for 32 years and runs a freight business.

Following the earthquake, which affected the region he is from, he has hired three large lorries for £20,000 to fill them up with humanitarian goods.

Hussein and his team reached out to the Turkish community and the response has been massive.

“We won’t have enough space to put all the donations in at this rate!” he says.

The lorries will leave London on Wednesday and should take about a week to reach the three cities of Pazarcik, Golbasi and Elbistan in southern Turkey.

Tom Bateman
Reporting from Iskenderun

Image source, EPA

A piece of wasteland is now home to families who survived the earthquake in Iskenderun, a Turkish port city in the southern Hatay province.

Spread before me is a scene of multiple disasters, with civilians left homeless and now living in the middle of intersecting streets where buildings have collapsed.

Smoke rises from a tower block which has apparently just fallen, others are shattered and precarious.

Across the street, a whole row of buildings is flattened. One woman says four of her friends are missing there and one is confirmed dead.

People are surviving on handouts of bread and tomatoes from a small aid group, while another truck throws out jumpers and trainers to a desperate crowd.

And above the whole scene rises a giant column of black smoke, cutting out the sunlight at times. It’s from a fire that broke out at Iskenderun's port when the first earthquake struck on Monday.

Ever since the first earthquake struck in the early hours of Monday morning, the death tolls in both Turkey and Syria have continued to grow.

We keep track of the toll in Turkey by using figures from officials including Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay, the Turkish disaster agency and Turkey's Anadolu state news agency.

As for Syria, the White Helmets - the volunteer Syrian civil defence which has been working to rescue people in the rebel-controlled areas of the country - have been sharing their death toll for some areas of the country. The Syrian government regularly updates its own toll too for the areas controlled by Damascus.

Parts of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province in southern Turkey, have seen entire city blocks levelled and reduced to rubble.

Search and rescue teams have come from across the country and beyond to help pull people out of the debris. But time is of the essence, and with every minute that passes, the likelihood of finding people alive decreases, especially as it's nearing 48 hours since the first earthquake happened.

The BBC's Middle East correspondent, Quentin Sommerville, has been down on the ground to survey the damage.

Image source, AFP

A newborn baby girl has been saved by rescuers from beneath the rubble of a building in north-western Syria that was destroyed by Monday's earthquakes.

Her mother went into labour soon after the disaster and gave birth before she died, a relative said. Her father, four siblings and an aunt were also killed.

Dramatic footage showed a man carrying the baby, covered in dust, after she was pulled from debris in Jindayris, an opposition-held town close to the Turkish border in Idlib province.

A doctor at a hospital in nearby Afrin said the girl was now in a stable condition.

Read the full story here.

Imogen Foulkes
Reporting from Geneva

Image source, Reuters

While international search and rescue teams with heavy lifting equipment arrive in Turkey, the single land route for aid into Syria has been disrupted.

The need for support in Turkey is huge - but so too are the needs in north-west Syria.

Before the earthquake even struck, 4.1 million people - most of them women and children - relied on humanitarian aid.

Image source, Reuters

Delivering it requires permission from the Syrian government in Damascus or the United Nations Security Council, where Russia has successfully objected to multiple land crossings.

The UN fears vital supplies to areas held by the opposition may be delayed. Today aid agencies said politics must not get in the way of saving lives.

After an earthquake, there is a seven-day window to rescue people from the rubble. Two of those days have already gone by.