Two people were reported to have been pulled alive from the rubble in Turkey on Thursday, but such rescues have become increasingly rare, leaving anger to smoulder as hope dies.
A 17-year-old girl was extracted from the ruins of a collapsed apartment bloc in Turkey's southeastern Kahramanmaras province, broadcaster TRT Haber reported, 248 hours since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the dead of night on February 6.
Footage showed her being carried away on a stretcher covered with a thermal blanket while an emergency worker held an intravenous drip.
About 10 hours later, Neslihan Kilic was rescued.
"We had prepared her grave and we asked the rescue workers to stop digging as we feared they would damage the remaining corpses under the rubble. Moments later, her voice was heard from under the ruins of the building," Kilic's brother-in-law told broadcaster CNN Turk.
Kilic's husband and two children are still missing.
The quake killed at least 38,044 people in southern Turkey, officials said on Friday, while authorities in neighbouring Syria have reported 5800 deaths.
The United Nations on Thursday appealed for more than $US1 billion ($A1.5 billion) for the Turkish relief operation, just two days after launching a $US400 million appeal for Syrians.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, speaking on Thursday in his first televised comments since the quake hit, said the response to the disaster required more resources than the government had available.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths, who visited Turkey last week, said the people had "experienced unspeakable heartache", adding: "We must stand with them in their darkest hour and ensure they receive the support they need."
For families still waiting to retrieve 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 Karaabduloglu, as excavators tore down what remained of a high-end block of flats in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, where her two daughters had lived.
About 650 people are believed to have died when the Renaissance Residence collapsed.
"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.
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 1414. More than 4000 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.
Deliveries from Turkey were severed completely in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, when a route used by the United Nations was temporarily blocked. This week, Assad granted approval for two additional crossings.
As of Thursday, 119 UN trucks had gone through the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings since the earthquake, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters.
