Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday declared a three-month-long emergency across ten provinces ravaged by the earthquake which has killed more than 3,500 people alone in the country.
"We have decided to declare a state of emergency to ensure that our (rescue and recovery) work can be carried out quickly," Erdogan said in a televised address.
Turkey, Syria earthquake LIVE updates
“We are declaring ten cities impacted by the earthquake disaster zone”, the Turkish president said, adding that the death toll had risen to 3,549.
Noting that 70 countries had offered help in search and rescue operations, Erdogan announced that the government planned to open up hotels in Antalya to temporarily house people affected by the earthquakes, Reuters reported.
According to the Turkish authorities, some 1.35 crore people were affected in the area which spanned 450 kilometres from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east and from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south.
Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake, which was followed by 285 aftershocks, and that 20,426 people had been injured.\
In Syria, the death toll stood at just over 1,600, according to the government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest, Reuters reported.
"It's now a race against time," World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. "Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes."