Race to find quake survivors – as it happened

Thank you for reading our live blog coverage so far. We are closing this blog and will be continuing our rolling live news from Turkey and Syria in a new one, which you can find here.

Turkey’s disaster agency has raised the death toll from the earhtquake again, Reuters reports. In Turkey, the figures now stand at 6,234 killed.

The number of those injured there rose to 37,011, the agency said, adding that more than 79,000 personnel were engaged in search and rescue operations mo the Turkish side of the border.

With Syria’s death toll climbing to 2,470, the combined number of people killed in the disaster currently stands at 8,704, and is exopected to contiune to rise throughout the day.

• This is Martin Belam in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

With that bit of good news, I’m handing over to my colleague Martin Belam.

This girl was rescued after being trapped for 40 hours in Salqin, Idlib:

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Here are some of this morning’s photos:

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I’m Helen Sullivan and if you’re just joining us, here is where things stand at the moment. If you’d like to get in touch, you can find me here. It is nearing 10am in Turkey.

• The latest death toll from Monday’s catastrophic earthquake stands at 8,364. On Wednesday morning, AFP reported that Syria’s toll had climbed to 2,470. At least 5,894 have died in Turkey, bringing the overall lives lost in both countries so far to 7,926. The numbers are expected to increase “significantly”, Syria’s White Helmets said.

• More than 8,000 people so far have been pulled from the debris in Turkey, said the Turkish vice-president, Fuat Oktay. About 380,000 people have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, with others huddling in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centres.

• On Tuesday afternoon, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared a disaster zone in the 10 provinces affected by the earthquakes, imposing a state of emergency in the region for three months.

• Turkey’s disaster management agency said it had 11,342 reports of collapsed buildings, of which 5,775 had been confirmed. The ministry of transport and infrastructure said that overnight 3,400 people took shelter in trains being used as emergency accommodation.

• Turkey has deployed more than 24,400 search and rescue personnel to the quake area. The number of personnel was expected to rise, disaster management agency official Orhan Tatar said.

• Three British nationals are missing after the earthquake, the UK’s foreign secretary said on Tuesday. “We assess that the likelihood of large-scale British casualties remains low,” James Cleverly said.

• Four Australians are unaccounted for following the earthquakes. Australia’s foreign affairs department is providing consular assistance to the families of the nationals who were where the catastrophe struck and to about 40 other Australians and their families who were also in the area.

Four Australians are unaccounted for following the earthquakes. Australia’s foreign affairs department is providing consular assistance to the families of the nationals who were where the catastrophe struck and to about 40 other Australians and their families who were also in the area.

“We’ve all seen the scenes of devastation, and the stories of human tragedy that we are witnessing,” foreign minister Penny Wong told the Senate on Wednesday.

“So, if we are able to assist, notwithstanding we are a long way away, I’m sure all of us would want the government to support our personnel to engage in such assistance.”

In Turkey, anger is mounting over what was described as a slow and inadequate response by authorities, the Guardian’s Ruth Michaelson and Sam Jones report:

Rescuers worked through the night on Wednesday, searching through the rubble of collapsed buildings, while freezing conditions, destroyed roads and poor infrastructure hindered the search in both countries.

Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, followed hours later by a second quake almost as powerful, toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injuring tens of thousands, leaving countless numbers homeless across Turkey and Syria.

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Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. But residents in several damaged cities voiced anger and despair over the response by authorities to the deadliest earthquake to hit Turkey in decades.

“There is not even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a home, without anything,” Murat Alinak, whose home in Malatya collapsed and whose relatives are missing, told Reuters. “What shall I do, where can I go?”

The number of people confirmed dead in Syria stands at 2,470 AFP reports.

This brings the number of people confirmed dead from Turkey and Syria to 8,364. Turkey’s official toll remains unchanged for now at 5,894.

I’m Helen Sullivan and if you’re just joining us, here is where things stand at the moment. If you’d like to get in touch, you can find me here.

• The latest death toll from Monday’s catastrophic earthquake stands at 8,364. On Wednesday morning, AFP reported that Syria’s toll had climbed to 2,470. At least 5,894 have died in Turkey, bringing the overall lives lost in both countries so far to 7,926. The numbers are expected to increase “significantly”, Syria’s White Helmets said.

• More than 8,000 people so far have been pulled from the debris in Turkey, said the Turkish vice-president, Fuat Oktay. About 380,000 people have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, with others huddling in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centres.

• On Tuesday afternoon, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared a disaster zone in the 10 provinces affected by the earthquakes, imposing a state of emergency in the region for three months.

• Turkey’s disaster management agency said it had 11,342 reports of collapsed buildings, of which 5,775 had been confirmed. Turkey’s ministry of transport and infrastructure said that overnight 3,400 people took shelter in trains being used as emergency accommodation.

• Turkey has deployed more than 24,400 search and rescue personnel to the quake area. The number of personnel was expected to rise, disaster management agency official Orhan Tatar said.

• Three British nationals are missing after the earthquake, the UK’s foreign secretary said on Tuesday. “We assess that the likelihood of large-scale British casualties remains low,” James Cleverly said.

This account of the earthquake from Syria, relayed to my colleague Mostafa Rachwani by Mohamad Kazmooz, is worth reading in full. Here is how it begins:

For the past two days, I have lived what has felt like an impossible nightmare.

At 4am on Monday, at our home in Idlib in north-west Syria, we were violently shaken awake by an extremely powerful earthquake.

It was a terror unlike any that I can describe, our home was shaking, our belongings were being tossed to the ground, screens were falling and shattering, pieces of the walls and chunks of the building collapsed.

In that moment, I did not think we would survive. I live with my wife and parents, and we were all violently woken up by this nightmare.

China’s earthquake rescue team, which has arrived in Turkey, is comprised of 82 members, brought 20 tonnes of medical and other rescue supplies and equipment, as well as four search-and-rescue dogs, according to CCTV.

The team will cooperate with the local government, the embassy in Turkey, the United Nations and other agencies on missions, including setting up a temporary command, carrying out personnel search and rescue and providing medical aid, CCTV said.

Separately, civil society rescue teams with at least 52 members from several provinces in China including Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Guangdong are heading to the earthquake-stricken areas in Turkey to carry out the rescue work, CCTV reported.

China has already committed to give a first tranche of 40 million yuan ($5.9 million) in emergency aid to Turkey.

These satellite images released by Maxar Technologies give an idea of the scale of the challenge for emergency crews over the coming days. They show in vivid detail the breadth of the destruction that has unfolded in towns, cities and villages across the region:

A woman named Nurgul Atay told the Associated Press she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province. But rescuers did not have the heavy equipment needed to rescue her.

“If only we could lift the concrete slab, we’d be able to reach her,” she said. “My mother is 70 years old, she won’t be able to withstand this for long.”

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,647 people were killed in Hatay alone, the highest toll of any Turkish province. At least 1,846 people had been rescued there as of Tuesday evening, he said. Hatay’s airport was closed after the quake destroyed the runway, complicating rescue efforts.

Here is a video of a man who appears to be part of a rescue crew offering a hard-working rescue dog some of his water, then freshening up his fur:

“People revolted (on Tuesday) morning. The police had to intervene,” a man named Celal Deniz, 61, told AFP in Gaziantep. His brother and nephews remain trapped under rubble.

“Where have all our taxes gone, collected since 1999?”

He was referring to a levy dubbed “the earthquake tax” that was implemented after a massive earthquake destroyed large parts of northwestern Turkey and killed 17,400 people,

The revenues – now estimated to be worth 88bn liras, or $4.6bn – were meant to have been spent on disaster prevention and the development of emergency services.

But how this money was actually spent is not publicly known.

If there aren’t enough rescuers, volunteers say they will have to step in and do the hard work themselves.