Turkish emergency teams have recovered the bodies of the last two missing earthquake victims from the rubble of a collapsed building, raising the death toll to 41.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck on Friday night also injured more than 1600 others, authorities said.
At least 45 survivors have been pulled out of the rubble alive.
Rescue teams on Monday drilled through the rubble in the eastern city of Elazig on Monday, trying to reach a missing 75-year-old woman and another person, as relatives waited nearby.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and Mehmet Gulluoglu, the head of the Turkish disaster management agency, later announced that their bodies were pulled out from the debris.
The body of a third missing person was pulled out of the same collapsed structure overnight.
Television footage showed scores of emergency workers gathered in a circle near the rubble to pray for the victims, before the search-and-rescue mission was formally called off.
The quake destroyed 76 buildings and damaged more than 1000 others, forcing survivors to take refuge in tents, mosques, schools, sports halls and student dormitories.
Authorities warned people not to return to homes that could be unsafe.
Friday's quake was followed by close to 950 aftershocks - 21 of them of them measuring magnitude 4 or higher.
As overnight temperatures dropped to minus 5C, emergency teams set up more than 9500 tents for displaced residents and distributed hot meals.
Soylu said authorities were setting up insulated container homes to house up to 1000 families left homeless by the quake.
Work to construct some 2000 permanent homes would begin in April, Turkey's urbanisation minister said.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 86 people injured by the quake remained hospitalised on Monday, 18 of them in intensive care.
Australian Associated Press
