The death toll from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria has risen to more than 22,000 as the search continues

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ISTANBUL, TURKEY — Emergency workers in Turkey and Syria conducted a series of extraordinary rescues on Friday, pulling about half a dozen people from collapsed buildings on both sides of the border, even as hopes faded of finding more survivors from two major earthquakes.

People — including a couple in the Turkish city of Iskenderun, a newborn baby in Hatay, and a mother and her two adult children in the Syrian city of Jableh — were among the few who managed to hold out for more than four days after the earthquakes. in frigid temperatures and under the wreckage of their homes.

In Turkey, scenes of survivors on stretchers offered rare moments of optimism amid the ever-widening tragedy. The death toll in both countries on Friday exceeded 23,000, the majority of whom died in Turkey, more than 80,000 wounded and countless others still trapped or missing under the rubble.

In opposition-held Syria, the Syrian Civil Defense Forces, also known as the White Helmets, announced the end of their search and rescue efforts on Friday. Members of the group — working with far fewer resources than rescuers in Turkey — have been digging with their own hands and basic construction tools in 40 towns and villages. Their leader, Raed al-Saleh, blamed the international community for failing to mobilize and provide equipment that he said could have saved more Syrian lives.

He told a news conference that the United Nations “didn’t do anything” to help rescue efforts in northwestern Syria, calling for an investigation into why foreign aid arrived first in government-held areas.

In this rebel-held pocket, which includes Idlib province and parts of Aleppo, 2,166 people have been killed and nearly 3,000 wounded, according to the White Helmets. But hundreds, possibly thousands, may have died in the rubble – and they have yet to be found.

Even before Monday’s earthquakes, 4.1 million people in northwest Syria were in need of humanitarian aid. As many as 5.3 million people across the country could be homeless due to the disaster, said Sivanka Dhanapala, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Syria, on Friday.

“We needed help here, and we asked for help here,” said Mahmoud Hafar, the mayor of the town of Cenderes on the Turkish border. “He never came.”

On Friday, 14 aid trucks carrying United Nations aid entered northwest Syria, the largest delivery of its kind in the aftermath of the earthquakes. An initial UN aid convoy entered the area on Thursday after UN officials said damage to roads had hampered cross-border operations. The UN humanitarian agency said the items included tents, blankets, heaters and solar lamps.

The World Health Organization has also sent emergency health supplies to both Turkey and Syria to treat injuries, as well as diseases such as pneumonia, which the organization expects to rise as people are exposed to low temperatures.

“These life-saving health supplies are essential to treat the wounded and provide urgent care to all those affected by this tragedy in both countries,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We are in a race against time to save lives.”

Syria’s state news agency reported that planes carrying supplies from Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Libya arrived at government-controlled airports in Syria on Friday. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited government-held Aleppo with his wife, Asma, in his first public visit to the disaster zone since the earthquakes.

Pictures released by the government showed them meeting patients at a hospital in the war-ravaged city, where rescue operations are continuing. According to state media, 1,347 people have been killed in government-controlled areas of the country.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the affected areas in the south of his country, where he described the earthquakes as “the catastrophe of the century.” The president and his party have faced mounting criticism of the government’s response – as well as apparent mockery of earthquake symbols, which cause thousands of buildings to collapse when earthquakes strike.

The Renaissance Residence apartment building in Atakya collapsed on its side when a massive earthquake struck southern Turkey on Feb. 6 (Video: David Enders for The Washington Post)

“Thousands of buildings have collapsed, exposing the sagging masonry that characterized Turkey’s building boom and making a mockery of ‘earthquake resistance’ and regulations that were intended to guide new Turkish buildings,” said Howard Eisenstadt, a non-resident researcher with the Turkey Program in The Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote on Friday.

“Corruption, especially the intimate relations between the government and friendly construction companies, means that these regulations have been largely ignored,” he said.

The official Anadolu news agency reported that the Turkish authorities detained, on Friday, Mehmet Yasar Coskun, the developer of a luxury residential complex in the southern city of Antakya, which collapsed during the earthquakes. The 12-storey apartment complex, dubbed Renaissance Residence, has 250 apartments, according to local media reports.

Aerial photos circulated on social media showed a catastrophic collapse, with large parts of the complex falling to the ground, even as other nearby residential buildings remained standing. It is feared that hundreds of people are trapped under the rubble. Anadolu said Coskun had been trying to travel from Istanbul to Montenegro on Friday evening and had been ordered into custody by the Istanbul prosecutor.

The 12-story apartment complex called Renaissance Residence in Antakya collapsed on its side when a massive earthquake struck southern Turkey on Feb. 6. (Video: Google/David Enders for The Washington Post)

John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, said Friday at a news briefing that at least eight American citizens were killed in the earthquakes.

The US military has also begun deploying troops to assist with earthquake relief in Turkey, with a Navy headquarters overseeing the mission and a Marine general arriving on the ground to assess the scope of support that may be required.

US military helicopters, including heavy helicopters and Black Hawks, have already been used to transport relief workers from Incirlik Air Base to the affected provinces. But more helicopters are scheduled to arrive at the base “in the coming days,” Jeffrey L. Flake, the US ambassador to Turkey, said in a brief interview Friday.

Over the past 48 hours, two US urban search and rescue teams have been working “day and night” to help resuscitate victims in the devastated Turkish city of Adiyaman, Flake said. He said the teams based in Fairfax, Virginia, and Los Angeles are “making good progress.”

An American field hospital has also been set up in Hatay, another hard-hit province, in coordination with the Samaritan Purse, a Christian disaster relief organization.

Flake said US financial aid has been earmarked for relief efforts in Syria, in both government and opposition-held parts of the country, through “partner organisations”. It is not clear exactly how much of the aid package, which totals $85 million, will go to Syria, which is isolated by civil war as well as Western sanctions.

Nor was it clear how the US military could also help in Syria, where the US maintains a limited counterterrorism mission in the northeast.

Today, Thursday, the Treasury Department issued a general license allowing transactions related to earthquake relief in Syria for a period of six months. The Syrian government also announced on Friday that it would allow aid to reach opposition areas with the help of the United Nations, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

O’Grady reported from Dahab, Egypt. Ward Faheem from Istanbul. Parker reported from Washington. Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul, Dan Lamothe in Washington, Elaine Francis in London, and Neha Masih in Seoul contributed to this report.

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