Istanbul, 15 February 2023 (dpa/MIA) - The death toll from devastating earthquakes along the Turkish-Syrian border continues to rise, with Turkish authorities reporting 35,418 dead in that country alone, taking the combined total with Syria over 40,000.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday evening that more than 13,000 people are being treated in hospital, the state news agency Anadolu reported.

About 1.6 million people are currently staying in emergency shelters in Turkey and another 600,000 people have left the region or been evacuated.

It is now time to "heal the wounds, relieve the pain and rebuild what was destroyed," Erdoğan said.

The search for survivors continued for an eighth day on Tuesday, despite dwindling hopes. According to media reports, four people were rescued alive under the rubble in south-eastern Turkey.

In the province of Kahramanmaraş, volunteers rescued two brothers aged 17 and 21 on Tuesday morning, Anadolu and the broadcaster CNN Türk reported. They reportedly had been trapped under the rubble for 198 hours.

In the province of Adiyaman, an 18-year-old who was also buried for 198 hours was reportedly rescued. According to Anadolu, in Hatay province, a 26-year-old woman was rescued alive after 201 hours under the rubble, and a 35-year-old woman after 205 hours.

Details of the rescues could not be independently verified.

An estimated 1 million people have lost their homes in Turkey, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO's) regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge.

Kluge called the earthquakes the region's worst natural disaster in a century.

Kluge said the number of injured has put a great strain on the Turkish health-care system, which itself suffered serious damage during the disaster.

"Now is the time for the international community to show the same generosity that Turkey has shown to other nations globally over the years," Kluge said on Tuesday. "The country is home to the largest refugee population in the world, 4.2 million people from neighbouring Syria, many of whom have lost everything again."

Turkish authorities, meanwhile, are still searching for family members of around 1,000 children who survived the quake, according to Turkish Family Minister Derya Yanik.

Yanik said 792 of the children were being treated in hospitals and another 201 were in the ministry's care. Only 369 children have been reunited with relatives.

Aid flights from around the world have been landing in Turkey and Syria with supplies and rescue teams from numerous countries have deployed to the region as well.

According to the German Ministry of Defence, 292 tons of aid have been shipped on 17 flights from Germany to Turkey so far.

The earthquakes struck the region more than a week ago, in the early hours of Monday morning. The first earthquake registered a magnitude of 7.7 while a second struck just hours later with a magnitude of 7.6.

Turkish disaster authorities have registered numerous additional aftershocks.

Across the border in war-torn Syria, the earthquakes killed at least 5,900 people, according to the most recent figures. Relief efforts there have been severely complicated by the decade-long civil war.