Five survivors were found Monday in the rubble of flattened buildings in eastern Turkey, where a powerful earthquake struck near the Iranian border on the weekend.
The 7.2-magnitude quake struck Sunday in the eastern province of Van, causing hundreds of mud-brick homes and concrete buildings to fall and hundreds of tragedies for the people who lived inside them.
As of Monday, Istanbul had confirmed at least 279 deaths that had resulted from the quake. Another 1,300 people were injured.
The worst damage occurred in the eastern city of Ercis, where a reported 80 multi-storey buildings collapsed.
Some 200 aftershocks have rumbled the region since Sunday's quake and survivors have been warned to stay out of dwellings that were damaged on the weekend.
Residents have been forced to camp outside, building small fires to keep warm amid cooling nighttime temperatures that have dipped to near freezing.
"My nephew, his wife and their child, all three dead. May God protect us from this kind of grief," said one local resident, Kursat Lap, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Nearby, dozens of bodies were being pulled from destroyed buildings, with body bags lining streets.
"What I've seen all day here in Ercis is just complete destruction and devastation," Reuters correspondent Jonathon Burch told CTV News on Monday.
Burch said a building had either collapsed, suffered damage or reached a point of near-collapse on nearly every road of Ercis. And these same buildings continue to be shaken by the more than 200 aftershocks that have followed Sunday's quake.
"There's not a single road in the town that doesn't have any destruction on it."
Rescue crews pulled a man named Yalcin Akay from a pile of rubble in Ercis after he used his cellphone to call for help. Three others, including two children, were found alive and rescued from the same building that stood six stories high the day before.
Hours later, a 21-year-old woman named Tugba Altinkaynak was found alive after spending 27 hours trapped under rubble. She had been having lunch with family when the ground began to rumble, her father, Nevzat, said.
A day after the quake, many people in Ercis were still coming to terms with the shock over what happened on Sunday.
"We did not understand what was going on, the buildings around us, the coffee house all went down so quickly," said 42-year-old Abubekir Acar, who was with a group of friends when the earthquake hit on Sunday.
"For a while, we could not see anything -- everything was covered in dust. Then, we heard screams and pulled out anyone we could reach."
Ninety kilometres south in the city of Van, the weekend quake destroyed the wall of a major prison. Sahin said search efforts were winding down in that city on Monday.
So far, Turkey has turned down offers assistance from other countries, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying the country is able to cope on its own for now.
Erdogan said that Azerbaijan, Iran and Bulgaria each sent aid, despite Turkey's insistence they can go it alone.
A seismologist told CTV News that quake survivors in eastern Turkey can expect those aftershocks to continue for weeks or even months to come.
And they could even see tremors that are nearly as powerful as Sunday's quake.
"The rule of thumb is that you can expect some aftershocks to be as large as one magnitude less than the main shock," said Sylvia Hayek, a seismologist with Natural Resources Canada.
"So, if you're talking a 7.2, then you could expect aftershocks up to 6.2, and of course those would be quite devastating to buildings that may have already been damaged in the region."
With files from The Associated Press
