Türkiye quake drone footage shows fissures slicing through land

Drone footage in southern Türkiye has shown fissures slicing and cracking across fields, roads, streams and hillsides, caused by massive earthquakes that struck the region at the start of the week.

One jagged scar of bare and cracked earth, opened up by Monday's quakes, cut deep into embankments and ran along expanses of open land up to the horizon near the town of Tevekkeli, in Türkiye's southern province of Kahramanmaras.

When it hit a highway, it smashed the tarmac and metal barriers. Huge boulders had tumbled down the hills on the side of the road.

Drivers had to wait in turn to navigate the fractured route.

Near the village of Tepehan, huge gorges cut through groves close to a house, leaving islands of grey-brown land and trees perched on the edge of new precipices. Other trees lay uprooted on their sides.

READ MORE: Türkiye earthquake biggest in over 100 years – Swiss seismologist

'We said this must be the epicentre'

Mehmet Temizkan said the tremors woke him in the early hours of Monday morning.

"With the initial panic, nobody knew whether we could leave home or whether we could survive. We lost hope. In the morning, when we saw what happened here, we said this must be the epicentre," he told Reuters

The combined death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in two decades that struck southern Türkiye and Syria stood at nearly 24,000 late on Friday.

The United Nations warned that at least 870,000 people were now in urgent need of hot meals across Türkiye and Syria.

In Syria alone, up to 5.3 million people may have been made homeless.

But miraculous rescues continued more than 100 hours after the first tremor tore apart roads and flattened hundreds of buildings while a winter storm raged over the region.

READ MORE: A guide to emotional healing after Türkiye's earthquake disaster