The 17-year-old was extracted from the ruins of a collapsed apartment bloc in Turkey’s southeastern Kahramanmaras province on Thursday, broadcaster TRT Haber reported, 248 hours since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the dead of night on February 6.

The quake killed at least 36,187 in southern Turkey, while authorities in neighbouring Syria have reported 5,800 deaths – a figure that has changed little in days.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the scale of the disaster demanded more resources from the government than it had available and thanked states that provided aid in the quake’s aftermath, including “Arab brothers and friends.”

“The scale of the disaster and the duties we must undertake are much greater than available resources,” Assad said in his first televised address since the earthquake struck.

International aid agencies are stepping up efforts to help the millions of people left homeless, many of whom are sleeping in tents, mosques, schools or in their own cars.

The United Nations on Thursday appealed for more than $1 billion in funds for the Turkish relief operation, just two days after launching a $400 million appeal for Syrians.

Several people were found alive in Turkey on Wednesday, but the number of rescues has dwindled significantly. Neither Turkey nor Syria have said how many people are still missing.

For families still waiting to retrieve their lost relatives, there is growing anger over what they see as corrupt building practices and deeply flawed urban development that resulted in thousands of homes and businesses disintegrating.

“I have two children. No others. They are both under this rubble,” said Sevil Karaabdüloğlu, as excavators tore down what remained of a high-end block of flats in the southern city of Antakya, where her two daughters had lived.

Around 650 people are believed to have died when the Renaissance Residence building collapsed in the quake.

“We rented this place as an elite place, a safe place. How do I know that the contractor built it this way? … Everyone is looking to make a profit. They’re all guilty,” she said.

Some 200 km  away, around 100 people gathered at a small cemetery in the town of Pazarcik, to bury a family of four – Ismail and Selin Yavuzatmaca and their two young daughters – who all died in the doomed Renaissance building.

Turkey has promised to investigate anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings and has ordered the detention of more than 100 suspects, including developers.

Across the border in Syria, the earthquake slammed a region divided and devastated by 12 years of civil war.

The Syrian government says the death toll in territory it controls is 1,414. More than 4,000 fatalities have been reported in the rebel-held northwest, but rescuers say nobody has been found alive there since February 9.

The aid effort has been hampered by the conflict and many people in the northwest feel abandoned as supplies almost invariably head to other parts of the sprawling disaster zone.

Heavy machinery was trying to clear mounds of debris that block numerous towns and cities in southeast Turkey, including in Adiyaman. Many survivors have fled the disaster zones, but some have decided to stay, despite the dreadful conditions.

-Reuters