Watch: 17-year-old teen pulled out from debris of collapsed building 248 hours after deadly Turkey quakes

A teenage girl was pulled alive from the rubble in Turkey on Thursday more than 10 days after an earthquake that has killed more than 42,000 people in the country and neighbouring Syria, as families of those still missing await news of their fate.

Aleyna Olmez, 17, was rescued in Turkey's southeastern Kahramanmaras province, broadcaster TRT Haber reported, 248 hours since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck in the dead of night on February 6.

Footage showed her being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance covered with a gold coloured thermal blanket.

The number of people killed by the deadliest earthquake in Turkey's modern history has risen to 36,187, authorities said. In Syria, where the earthquake has compounded a humanitarian crisis caused by 12 years of war, the reported death is toll 5,800 — a figure that has changed little in days.

While several people were also found alive in Turkey on Wednesday, reports of such rescues have become increasingly frequent. Authorities in Turkey and Syria have not announced how many people are still missing.

Millions of people are in need of humanitarian aid after being left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures.

In the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, a photo of two missing boys had been tied to a tree close to the block of flats where they lived.

"Their parents are deceased," said earthquake survivor Bayram Nacar, who stood waiting with other local men wearing masks as an excavator cleared a huge pile of shattered concrete and twisted metal rods behind the tree.

He said the bodies of the boys' parents were still under the rubble. "The father was called Atilla Sariyildiz. His body is yet to be found. We are hoping to find the parents after the excavators remove the debris."

More than 4,300 aftershocks had hit the disaster zone since the initial, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.

Aid convoys

The Syrian government has declared the death toll in territory it controls as 1,414, saying this is the final tally.

The bulk of fatalities in Syria have been in the rebel-held northwest, but rescuers say nobody has been found alive there since February 9 and the focus has shifted to helping survivors.

With much of the region's sanitation infrastructure damaged or rendered inoperable, health authorities face a daunting task in trying to ensure that people now remain disease-free.

• Turkey-Syria earthquake: 78 arrested over 'provocative' social media posts