The UN agency for coordinating emergency response has said it needs almost €1bn to provide assistance to people impacted by earthquakes in Turkey.
In a flash appeal published today, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said it needed $1bn for multiple reasons including shelter, food, health and sanitation.
UNOCHA said 9.1 million people are directly affected in the 11 hardest-hit provinces while the the total population in these areas is 15.6 million.
It said the figure may be revised as humanitarian organisations have not yet been able to undertake detailed needs assessments nor prepare comprehensive operational planning.
UNOCHA also said it needed $397.6m (€372.6m) for the response to the earthquakes in Syria where a further 8.8m people are affected.
'Lost hope in living'
A volunteer with the Syria Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, has appealed for international assistance following the devastating earthquake.
Ismail Alabdullah, who is currently based near the epicentre, said people urgently require humanitarian aid and the help of rescue teams.
He said people in the quake-hit region of Northwest Syria feel let down and he said "those who are injured and homeless need care, they need hospital, they need a place to sleep".
"We are asking from everyone, everyone who cares about the people, about human rights, about the children to help us; we need help from everyone, not just the United Nations, from everyone who can help these poor people in this winter cold weather and difficult situation," he said.
He said while the hospitals are trying their best, the facilities are overwhelmed with injured people.
Mr Alabdullah told RTÉ News that "devastation is everywhere, people are devastated by what happened, the destruction, they lost their homes".
"They have lost the hope in living," he added.
Earlier, Turkish rescuers have pulled a 17-year-girl from the rubble of last week's devastating earthquake, as hopes fade of finding more survivors.
Aleyna Olmez was rescued 248 hours after the 7.8-magnitude quake flattened entire cities, killing more than 41,000 people across southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.
"She looked to be in good health. She opened and closed her eyes," one of the people who took part in the rescue effort, told AFP in Kahramanmaras, a city near the quake's epicentre.
"We have been working here in this building for a week now ... We came here with the hope of hearing sounds," he said.
"We are happy whenever we find a living thing - even a cat."
The girl's uncle tearfully hugged the rescuers one by one, saying: "We will never forget you."
But after the rescue, Turkish soldiers told the media and locals to leave the scene because teams were starting to pull corpses out of the rubble.
Officials and medics said 38,044 people had died in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria from the tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 41,732.
Turkey has suspended rescue operation in some reqions. The government in war-torn Syria has done the same in areas under its control.
While several people were also found alive in Turkey yesterday, reports of such rescues have become increasingly infrequent.
Authorities in Turkey and Syria have not announced how many people are still missing.
Millions of people are in need of humanitarian aid after being left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures.
In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, a photo of two missing boys had been tied to a tree close to the block of flats where they lived.
"Their parents are deceased," said earthquake survivor Bayram Nacar, who stood waiting with other local men wearing masks as an excavator cleared a huge pile of shattered concrete and twisted metal rods behind the tree.
He said the bodies of the boys' parents were still under the rubble.
"The father was called Atilla Sariyildiz. His body is yet to be found. We are hoping to find the parents after the excavators remove the debris."
More than 4,300 aftershocks had hit the disaster zone since the initial, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.
The bulk of fatalities in Syria have been in the rebel-held northwest, but rescuers say nobody has been found alive there since 9 February and the focus has shifted to helping survivors.
With much of the region's sanitation infrastructure damaged or rendered inoperable, health authorities face a daunting task in trying to ensure that people now remain disease-free.
The aid effort in the northwest has been hampered by the conflict and many people there feel abandoned as aid heads to other parts of the sprawling disaster zone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was particularly concerned by the welfare of people in the northwest, where some 4 million people were already dependent on humanitarian aid before the earthquake struck.
Aid deliveries from Turkey were severed completely in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, when a route used by the United Nations was temporarily blocked.
Earlier this week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad granted approval for two additional crossings to be opened for aid - more than a week after the earthquake. The WHO has asked him to give approval for more access points to be opened.
As of today, 119 UN trucks had gone through the Babal-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings since the earthquake, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
The aid comprised of food, essential medicine, tents and other shelter items and cholera testing kits, given the area is still witnessing a cholera outbreak.
Additional reporting Fergal O'Brien
