STORY: "I told myself this should be doomsday," said Hulusi Ibrahim as he waited outside the heap of rubble that was his home.

"My wife was trapped under me. I didn't hear from her for a very long time."

He stayed with his wife even though she was not responding. Several hours later, he managed to find his way out of the rubble. With some minor cuts on his face, Ibrahim said he fears the worst.

"There is always hope but I stayed with her for three hours and spent another hour to get out. I didn't get any response from her for three hours. I don't know. I can't bring myself to say. But I don't have hope," he tearfully said.

The magnitude 7.8 quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war.

It was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.