HAUNTING images show mass graves with numbered headstones in Turkey as the death toll from the massive earthquake reaches 22,000.

The catastrophic quake caused thousands of buildings to collapse as rescuers continue their heroic efforts to find survivors trapped in the rubble.

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Devastating pictures show a mass grave in Jandaris,SyriaCredit: Reuters

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A man mourning for his loved ones in a mass grave in HatayCredit: AFP

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Heartbroken relatives burying their families in Adiyaman, TurkeyCredit: AP

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The number of casualties has now hit 22,000Credit: Reuters

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A man was pictured praying in a cemetery in Kahramanmaras, TurkeyCredit: Reuters

Soul-crushing pictures show heartbroken families looking for their loved ones in the mass graves.

Dad Naser al-Wakaa sobbed as he sat on the pile of rubble that would have been his family home after he lost his wife and five children in the disaster.

The high number of casualties has overwhelmed morgues and cemeteries as in some areas bodies lie wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarps.

Meanwhile, in Kahramanmaras, a sports hall served as a makeshift morgue to accommodate and identify bodies.

Some have miraculously defied the odds and made it out alive, even after spending hours under the wreckage.

Among the survivors was six-year-old Musa Hmeidi who was found alive under the rubble today.

Zeynep Ela Parlak was found under a collapsed building in Hatay this morning after spending 103 under the wreckage.

Rescuers also found 10-day-old baby Yagiz Ulas, who was pulled out of a collapsed building in Samandag, with his mum after 90 hours.

The newborn was wrapped in a thermal blanket and carried to a field hospital as video showed emergency workers taking away his mum as well.

In Diyarbakir to the east, Sebahat Varli, 32, and her son Serhat were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday morning, 100 hours after the quake.

It comes as….

• Desperate survivors made homeless by the quake are living in freezing conditions after their homes were destroyed.
• Heartbreaking video shows a little girl protecting her brother while stuck under rubble before they’re saved.
• Mystery surrounds the fate of former Premier League star Christian Atsu, who was buried under the rubble, amid conflicting reports.
• Love Island star Belle Hassan and her dad Tamer have lost family in the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria.
• Fears are growing for an entire school volleyball team trapped under rubble following the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey.
• Claims Turkey had failed prepare for a quake “for 20 years” and wasted £3.8bn in emergency funds raised with special tax.
• Britain will send up to 100 more aid workers to Turkey to save lives after the devastating earthquake.
• Ex-Dragons’ Den tycoon Theo Paphitis has boosted The Sun’s Earthquake Appeal by £5,000.

The family of 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut cried tears of joy when the teen was rescued after being trapped in a basement for 94 hours surviving by drinking his own urine.

“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance.

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The 7.8-magnitude quake has claimed the lives of thousands of peopleCredit: Getty

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Rescue teams continue to search for survivors in the rubbleCredit: Getty

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It is estimated that thousands remain trapped under the wreckageCredit: Reuters

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A great number of buildings collapsed in TurkeyCredit: AP

In the southern city of Hatay, three-year-old Rami was shown in the hands of a rescuer after him and his mum Aya were found after being trapped for 82 hours.

Elsewhere, Haber Turk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a high-rise apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who waved at onlookers as she was being carried away on a stretcher.

Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the chances of finding survivors are dimming.

Some 12,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or sustained serious damage, according to Turkeys minister of environment and urban planning, Murat Kurum.

It is estimated the deadliest quake in the region in over two decades has so far cost the lives of 22,000 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria four days after it hit.

Officials suggest the death toll in Turkey rose to 19,388 on Friday while more than 3,300 have been killed in Syria.

Many more people remain under the rubble.

Some 24.4 million people in Syria and Turkey have been affected, according to Turkish officials and the United Nations, in an area spanning roughly 280 miles from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east.

In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, 250 km from the epicentre.

The UK has now pledged will send up to 100 more aid workers to Turkey to save lives after the devastating earthquake.

Our aid teams will set up a field hospital with its own operating theatre and ward to treat casualties on the ground.

And the Defence and Foreign Secretaries have given the green light for a C130 Hercules plane to fly over to transport critically injured people out of the worst affected areas as soon as possible.

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Rescuers are trying to listen if there’s anyone needing helpCredit: Reuters

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Rescuers pictured with 10-day-old baby Yagiz UlasCredit: Getty

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Teenager Adnan survived after being trapped for 94 hours

Mother and her three children are pulled out from rubble after 108 HOURS buried alive in one of the most astonishing rescue stories yet from Turkey and Syria

It has now been four and a half days since twin earthquakes wrought havoc across hundreds of square miles of Turkey and Syria.

Yet tireless rescue teams are still managing to extract survivors from mountains of debris in spite of the horrendous conditions.

The latest rescue, which saw rescuers use a chainsaw to rip through the detritus separating them from a mother and her three young children who were entombed by a multi-storey building in Antalya, Turkey, is undoubtedly among the most miraculous.

All four were battered, bruised and severely dehydrated, but had somehow clung to life after being buried for 108 hours.

Shocking images showed how the family were extracted on spinal stabilisation stretchers owing to the extent of their injuries – but all of them survived the terrifying ordeal thanks to the bravery of their rescuers.

The scarcely believable tale of endurance comes after a 10-day-old boy and his mother were pulled alive from the rubble 90 hours after their home was reduced to ruins.

The infant, named Yagiz, had spent almost half his life stuck under slabs of concrete before he was extracted from the ruins of Turkey’s southern Hatay province.

Dramatic footage showed the child being carefully lifted out of the rubble and wrapped in a thermal blanket by paramedics, while his mother was strapped to a stretcher after injuries left her unable to walk.

A young child is carried free of the debris on a spinal stabilisation stretcher after being dug out of the rubble in Antalya, Turkey, alongside two other siblings and their mother 108 hours after they were buried

Rescuers rejoice as a young boy, one of three children, was saved in Antalya, Turkey

A rescuer employs a chainsaw to slice through debris and access a family still alive after 108 hours underground

A mother and her three children are rescued 108 hours after earthquakes hit multiple provinces of Turkiye

10-day-old baby Yagiz Ulas is rescued from rubble after 90 hours in Hatay, Turkey

Three year old Zeynep Ela Parlak is rescued 103 hours after earthquakes hit Turkey

Dilan Oktay is rescued from under rubbles of the collapsed Arzu Apartment in Iskenderun district 102 hours after earthquakes hit Turkey

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu – whose teams were reportedly involved in the rescue – lauded the efforts of rescue workers, saying the extraction took place in the town of Samandag.

Desperate search and rescue efforts are ongoing in both Turkey and neighbouring Syria, with some quake victims still clinging to life beneath the debris.

This morning a family of six was saved in Iskenderun and a teenager was hauled free in Gaziantep more than 100 hours after being entombed by the quakes.

One three-year-old girl was extracted alive after 103 hours stuck underground, and 18-month-old Yusuf Huseyin somehow made it 105 hours alive before being saved.

But hopes of finding many more survivors are rapidly dwindling, with dehydrated and injured victims also suffering bitter winter temperatures four days on from the disaster.

The death toll from the earthquake, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called ‘the disaster of the century’, has risen to more than 21,000.

People at the cemetery as they bury their loved ones, victims of Monday earthquake, in Adiyaman, Friday, Feb. 10, 2023

The death toll from the earthquake, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called ‘the disaster of the century’, has risen to more than 21,000

The earthquake devastated huge swathes of land. This drone footage shows a major fracture running through the countryside near Kahramanmaras

Large surface fractures on roads and earth that go on for kilometres display the drastic impact of the earthquake, around Tevekkelli Village in Kahramanmaras, Turkey

Yasemin Oktay is rescued from under rubbles of the collapsed Arzu Apartment in Iskenderun

18-month-old Yusuf Huseyin and his 7-year-old elder brother are rescued from rubbles of a collapsed building 105 hours

A 7-year-old boy is saved from debris 105 hours after earthquakes struck southern Turkey

This total eclipses the more than 18,400 who died in the 2011 earthquake off Fukushima, Japan, that triggered a tsunami, and the estimated 18,000 people who died in a tremor near Istanbul in 1999.

The new figure, which is certain to rise, included more than 18,000 people in Turkey and more than 3,000 in civil war-torn Syria.

The scale of the devastation is scarcely believable, with entire neighbourhoods of high-rises reduced to twisted metal, pulverised concrete and exposed wires.

Even though experts say trapped people could survive for a week or more, the chances of finding survivors in the freezing temperatures are dimming.

But a few miraculous tales of survival and triumph continue to emerge as emergency crews made a series of dramatic rescues this morning.

In the demolished port city of Iskenderun, a family of six was rescued from a collapsed building after spending 102 hours beneath the debris.

Their building, a high-rise apartment block, stood only 600 feet from the Mediterranean Sea. The massive earthquake which struck on Monday caused water from the sea to rise into the city centre of Iskenderun, and streets were flooded to within feet of the building.

A rescuer takes care of a young girl rescued 4 days after the earthquake, in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey

Rescue workers are overwhelmed with emotion after successfully extracting a three-year-old girl from the rubble after 103 hours

Zeynep is barely conscious but still alive after 103 hours trapped under a building

Search and rescue teams cry after rescuing Zeynep Ela Parlak, 3, from under rubble of a collapsed building 103 hours after quakes

A picture taken with a drone shows the destruction following a powerful earthquake in the city of Kahramanmaras, Turkey, 10 February 2023

The Otkay family managed to survive the cold by huddling together in a small pocket left within the collapsed structure, said Murat Baygul, a search and rescue worker.

Other volunteers were seen celebrating wildly, delirious with joy at having saved an entire family.

Earlier this morning, a teenager was pulled largely unscathed from a mountain of detritus in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Adnan Muhammed Korkut was extracted safe and sound from the basement where had been trapped since the tremor struck on Monday.

The 17-year-old beamed a smile at the crowd of friends and relatives who cried tears of joy as he was carried out and put onto a stretcher.

‘Thank God you arrived,’ he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance. ‘Thank you everyone.’

Trapped for 94 hours, but not crushed, the teenager said he had been forced to drink his own urine to slake his thirst. ‘I was able to survive that way,’ he said.

A rescue worker, identified only as Yasemin, told him: ‘I have a son just like you. I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. I swear I did not sleep; I was trying to get you out.’

Helin Oktay is one of six family members, all of whom survived 102 hours trapped underground

Crew members celebrate after rescuing six members of a family from under rubbles of the collapsed Arzu Apartment in Iskenderun district 102 hours after the quakes

Uzbek crews rescue 32 year-old Naim Bayasli from under the rubble of a collapsed four-storey building in Turkey’s Antakya district more than 100 hours after the quakes hit

36 year-old Gulendam Avcioglu is rescued from debris in Hatay, Turkey on February 10, 2023

People look as emergency personnel work at the site of collapsed buildings following a powerful earthquake in the city of Kahramanmaras

This handout photograph made available by the FDFA’s Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) on February 9, 2023, shows members of the Swiss rescue team handing over a four-month-old girl called Abir rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building following a massive earthquake

A worker prepares a mass grave for the funeral of victims of the earthquake on February 10, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey

In Hatay, a seven-year-old girl named Asya Donmez was rescued after 95 hours and taken to hospital, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported, while in Diyarbakir to the east, Sebahat Varli, 32, and her son Serhat were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday morning, 100 hours after the first quake.

But now, as emergency crews and panicked relatives continue to dig through the rubble – and occasionally find people alive – the focus is shifting to demolishing dangerously unstable structures to prevent any further unnecessary deaths.

In Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicentre, a sports hall the size of a basketball court served as a makeshift morgue to accommodate and identify bodies.

Workers continued rescue operations in Kahramanmaras, but it was clear that many who were trapped in collapsed buildings had already died.

One rescue worker was heard saying that his psychological state was declining and that the smell of death was becoming too much to bear.

Mass graves are now being erected in several regions as the bodies begin to pile up.

Solemn images out of the Hatay region of Turkey showed hundreds of metres of fresh graves bearing nothing other than simple stones on which numbers had been spray-painted to count the dead.

In north-western Syria meanwhile, the first UN aid trucks arrived in the rebel-controlled areas from Turkey only yesterday, with the people there having endured three days of horror with little to no aid.

Mass graves are prepared for the funeral of victims of the earthquake on February 10, 2023 in Hatay, Turkey

People bury their relatives in a mass grave area following an earthquake in Hatay, Turkey, 10 February 2023

A man watches over 36 year-old Gulendam Avcioglu who was rescued more than 100 hours after the quake in Hatay, Turkey

An aerial view of ongoing search and rescue operations at Ayse-Polat Residential Site in Batikent neighbourhood of Gaziantep, Turkey, February 10

A view of ongoing search and rescue operations in Adiyaman,Turkey

A view of ongoing search and rescue operations on a collapsed building in Gaziantep, Turkey

A man speaks on his cellphone among bodies, victims of the earthquake, at an indoor stadium, in Kahramanmaras, southeastern Turkey

Aerial photo showing the destruction in Kahramanmaras city center, southern Turkey

Collapsed buildings are seen through the windows of a damaged house following a devastating earthquake in the town of Jinderis, Aleppo province, Syria

Miner Sinan Durdu, who pulled a 17 year-old girl alive from the rubble after reaching 8 metres depth, demonstrates the search and rescue operation in Adiyaman, Turkey

Miner Sinan Durdu (C), who pulled a 17 year-old girl alive from the rubbles after reaching 8 metres depth, warms himself up around fire in Adiyaman

Many of those who have lost their homes found shelter in tents, stadiums and other temporary accommodation, but others have been forced to sleep outdoors.

The winter weather and damage to roads and airports have hampered the response of aid agencies struggling to reach many remote areas.

Turkish President Erdogan is touring the disaster zone for a second day on Friday, while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first reported trip to affected areas since the quake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo, Syrian state media reported.

Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 110,000 rescue personnel were now taking part in the effort and more than 5,500 vehicles, including tractors, cranes, bulldozers and excavators had been shipped.

The foreign ministry said 95 countries have offered help.

The disaster has cast doubt on whether the May 14 Turkish election will go ahead on time. A Turkish official said on Thursday it posed ‘very serious difficulties’ for the vote in which Erdogan has been expected to face his toughest challenge in two decades in power.

With anger simmering over delays in the delivery of aid and getting the rescue effort underway, the disaster is likely to play into the vote if it goes ahead.

Relief efforts in Syria meanwhile have been complicated by the 11-year-long civil war that has partitioned the country. The United States on Thursday called on Damascus to immediately allow aid in through all border crossings.

Erdogan’s opponents have accused the government of a tardy and inadequate response. Erdogan has called for solidarity and condemned what he has described as ‘negative campaigns for political interest’.

Erdogan meets people displaced by earthquakes which devastated 10 provinces in Turkey’s southeast

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraces quake-hit children at a tent city set up by Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) of Turkey

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan visits a survivor at a hospital in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Kilis, Turkey February 9, 2023

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad (R) visiting a wounded survivor of the earthquake, that hit Turkey and Syria, at a hospital in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on February 10, 2023

A handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency Facebook page, shows Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad (C) and first lady Asma al-Assad (R) visiting a wounded survivor of the earthquake

A picture of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is seen near the rubble of damaged building, in the aftermath of an earthquake, in Jableh, Syria February 9, 2023

Handout photo dated 09/02/23 issued by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) of UK Humanitarian Aid being loaded onto a Royal Air Force A400M Atlas aircraft at RAF Brize Norton ahead of being transported to Turkey

The UK will send a field hospital and C130 Hercules critical care air support team and aircraft in the coming days to help provide vital emergency treatment to those critically injured (A400M Atlas aircraft is loaded with supplies yesterday)

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of Turkey’s main opposition party, criticised the government response late on Thursday, citing an AFAD report about a tremor in the northwest in November.

‘The earthquake was huge, but what was much bigger than the earthquake was the lack of coordination, lack of planning and incompetence,’ Kilicdaroglu said in a video statement.

Syrians have also voiced despair at the slow response including in areas controlled by Assad, who is shunned by the West.

United Nations assistance began flowing again into the insurgent-held northwest on Thursday after the aid lifeline, critical to some 4 million people, was severed.

The U.S. State Department said Washington would continue to demand unhindered humanitarian access to Syria and urged Assad’s government to immediately allow aid through all border crossings.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for more humanitarian access to Syria, saying he would be ‘very happy’ if the United Nations could use more than one border crossing to deliver help.

The Syrian government, which is under Western sanctions, has appealed for U.N. aid while saying all assistance must be done in coordination with Damascus and delivered from within Syria, not across the Turkish border.

Damascus views the delivery of aid to rebel-held areas from Turkey as a violation of its sovereignty.