President Tayyip Erdogan has admitted there are problems with his government’s initial response to a devastating earthquake in southern Turkey amid anger from those left destitute and frustrated over the slow arrival of rescue teams.

Erdogan, who contests an election in May, said on a visit to the disaster zone that operations were now working normally and promised no one would be left homeless, as the combined death toll across Turkey and neighbouring Syria climbed to more than 12,000.

Across a swathe of southern Turkey, people sought temporary shelter and food in freezing winter weather, and waited in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends might still lie buried.

Rescuers were still digging out some people alive, and finding others dead. 

But many Turks have complained of a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped – sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.

“Where is the state? Where have they been for two days? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can get them out,” Sabiha Alinak said near a snow-covered collapsed building where her young relatives were trapped in the city of Malatya.

There were similar scenes and complaints in neighbouring Syria, whose north was also hard hit by Monday’s huge quake.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations admitted the government had a “lack of capabilities and lack of equipment” but blamed this on over a decade of war in his country and foreign sanctions.

The death toll from both countries was expected to rise further as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep in their homes when the quake hit in the early morning.

In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital.

Melek, 64, said she had seen no rescue teams. 

“We survived the earthquake but we will die here due to hunger or cold.”

Families in southern Turkey and in Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold.

Many in the disaster zone had slept in their cars or in the streets under blankets, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the 7.8 magnitude tremor – Turkey’s deadliest since 1999 – and by a second powerful quake hours later.

The reported death toll rose to 9057 in Turkey on Wednesday. 

In war-wrecked Syria, the confirmed toll climbed to more than 2950 overnight, according to the government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held northwest.

Turkish authorities released video of rescued survivors including a young girl in pyjamas and an older man covered in dust, an unlit cigarette clamped between his fingers as he was pulled from the debris.

Turkish officials say 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. 

In Syria, it killed people as far south as Hama, 250km from the epicentre.

Some of those killed in Turkey were refugees from Syria’s war. 

Their body bags arrived at the border in taxis, run-down vans and in piles atop flatbed trucks to be taken to final resting places in their homeland.

More than 298,000 people have been made homeless and 180 shelters for the displaced had been opened, Syrian state media reported, apparently referring to areas under government control, not those held by other factions.

KAHRAMANMARAS/ANTAKYA

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