11,000 dead as search continues for earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

The rescuers They ran to pull the survivors from the rubble of the earthquake when the body count exceeded 9,000 in southern Turkey and the north of Syria war-torn Wednesday.

Officials and doctors said 8,574 people have died in Turkey and 2,662 in Syria, bringing the total to 11,236. But that could still rise dramatically if experts’ worst fears come true.

The death toll continues to rise

Hopes of rescuing more people from beneath the rubble are now fading as time passes since the magnitude 7.8 quake struck before dawn Monday, the largest to hit Turkey since 1939, when some 33,000 people died in the eastern province of Erzincan.

Since then, the region has been hit by more than 100 aftershocks, including a second magnitude 7.6 tremor. Tragic scenes of a newborn being pulled alive from the rubble and a broken father holding the hand of his dead daughter have laid bare the human cost of the natural disaster.

Nearly two days after an apartment building collapsed in Kahramanmaras, a Turkish town not far from the epicenter, rescuers pulled a three-year-old boy from under the rubble.

In the northwestern Syrian town of Jindires, residents found a crying newborn still connected by umbilical cord to her deceased mother. The baby was reportedly the only member of her family to survive.

At least 1,280 people have been killed in the opposition-controlled northwest, with more than 2,300 injured, according to volunteer first responders known as White Helmets. The Syrian government has reported an additional 1,250 deaths.

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