The UN's chief of humanitarian affairs cautioned on Saturday that the death toll from the earthquake that has ravaged Turkey and Syria is likely to quadruple.Accordi

The UN's chief of humanitarian affairs cautioned on Saturday that the death toll from the earthquake that has ravaged Turkey and Syria is likely to quadruple.

According to Turkish officials, the death toll from Monday's earthquake has reached 21,848, while 3,553 people have died in neighboring Syria, bringing the overall death toll to over 25,000.

Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN's relief efforts, called the earthquake "the deadliest disaster in this region in 100 years" and anticipated that the death toll would at least treble.

In a speech given while in Adana, Turkey, he said: "I think it is tough to quantify precisely as we need to dig under the rubble, but I'm sure it will double or more. That is awful. This is nature's incredibly cruel way of striking back. In the midst of looting and violence warnings, the rescue effort went on as usual on Saturday. Volunteers and charities kept rescuing people from the rubble, but security issues brought on by looting have forced two aid organizations to halt their operations.

German federal agencies for technical relief (THW) and international search and rescue (ISAR) have halted operations due to reports of violent altercations and shootings.

Mehmet Bok, 26, a resident of the earthquake-stricken Turkish city of Antakya, reported witnessing people "smashing the windows and gates of shops and cars" in the early hours and days following Monday's tremor.

Turkey's earthquake response and preparedness have come under scrutiny in the meantime because of the rising death toll, and Tayyip Erdogan, the president of the nation, acknowledged on Friday that authorities could have responded more quickly.

Speaking on Saturday, he said that hundreds of thousands of structures in the nation were now utterly uninhabitable and that reconstruction work on cities will start "within weeks."

Additionally, he sternly warned those who were looting in the disaster area.

Speaking on Saturday from Diyarbakir, he said: "We can claim that nearly no stone was left standing in several areas of our settlements close to the fault line."

According to Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay, 67 people have been rescued from the rubble in the last 24 hours, and 31,000 rescuers are still searching the wreckage of buildings for survivors.

According to him, over a million individuals who have been made homeless by the earthquakes are staying in temporary shelters while about 80,000 people are receiving medical treatment in hospitals.

Relief operations in northwest Syria, where the earthquake caused the most significant damage, have been made extremely difficult by the country's more than ten-year-long civil conflict.

According to the UN, the first assistance convoy for the earthquake entered northwest Syria on Friday from Turkey.

According to state news agency SANA, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization, arrived in Aleppo in northern Syria on Saturday with 35 tons of medical supplies.

He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tonnes of medical equipment would arrive in the coming days.

It's "nearly hard to find individuals alive," according to the opposition Syrian Civil Defense, better known as the White Helmets.

According to the UN organization for refugees, up to 5.3 million people in Syria are now without a home. As time goes on, fewer rescue operations are successful today. After 128 hours, rescuers in Antakya managed to extract 13-year-old Arda Can Ovun from the rubble of a building by wrapping him in foil and bracing his neck while he was raised off the ground on a stretcher.

Overnight, a 55-year-old woman was extricated from the rubble in the eastern city of Diyarbakir, and a 70-year-old woman and a nine-year-old son were rescued in Kahramanmaras.

Although experts claim that people who are trapped can survive for a week or longer, the chances of finding more survivors are rapidly decreasing due to the extreme cold.

Rescuers are now employing thermal cameras to look for life under the rubble, which suggests that any survivors who are still alive may be too weak to call for aid.

Death toll from Turkey-Syria earthquake expected to double as fatalities pass 25,000

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