麻豆社

Rescue workers continue to find survivors of the devastating quakes on 6th February but hope is fading. A week after the earthquakes, more than 33,000 people are known to have died in Turkey and Syria -- at least 4,300 of those deaths have been reported in Syria.

Thousands of international rescue workers have been helping national officials in the task. But the scale of the work is overwhelming as Newsday heard from a member of the British contingent, David O鈥橬eill of the London Fire Brigade who has been working in Hatay in southern Turkey.

"We certainly have enough equipment... it's literally the scale of what we're facing that is the biggest challenge. The city is divided into neighbourhoods... and sectors... and one of the international teams will be allocated a sector. The United Kingdom team were allocated a sector in the centre of Hatay. Immediately we made contact with the Turkish civil protection team and they were able to provide us with very accurate local information of where people were trapped."

(Pic: Rescue team members carry survivor Lena Maradini, 11, from a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Hatay, 160 hours after an earthquake on 6th February; Credit: EPA)

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