Turkey-Syria quake deaths pass 28,000, UN warns toll to double

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths warned that the death toll was likely to at least double, while denouncing a failure to provide sufficient aid for victims in war-torn northwestern Syria.

"We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn't arrived," Griffiths said on Twitter.

"My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can."

Griffiths arrived in southern Turkey Saturday to assess the quake's damage, telling Sky News he expected the death toll to "double or more" as the chances of finding survivors dim with each passing day.

Tens of thousands of rescue workers continued to scour flattened neighbourhoods in freezing weather that has deepened the misery of millions now in desperate need of aid.

Security concerns led some aid operations to be suspended, and dozens of people have been arrested for looting or trying to defraud victims in the aftermath of the quake in Turkey, according to state media.

But miraculous tales of survival still emerged.

"Is the world there?" asked 70-year-old Menekse Tabak as she was pulled out from the concrete in the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, to applause and cries praising God, according to a video on state broadcaster TRT Haber.

A seven-month-old baby named Hamza was rescued in southern Hatay province more than 140 hours after the quake, while Esma Sultan, 13, was also saved in Gaziantep, state media reported.

Families were racing against time to find their missing relatives' bodies in southern Turkey.

"We hear (the authorities) will no longer keep the bodies waiting after a certain period of time, they say they will take them and bury them," Tuba Yolcu said in Kahramanmaras.

Another family clutched each other in grief at a cotton field transformed into a cemetery, where a seemingly endless stream of bodies arrived for swift burials.