International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.
A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.
At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
Aftershocks following Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.
"When I see the destroyed buildings, the bodies, it's not that I can't see where I will be in two or three years -- I can't imagine where I'll be tomorrow," said Fidan Turan, a pensioner in Turkey's southern city of Antakya, her eyes filling with tears.
"We've lost 60 of our extended family members," she said. "Sixty! What can I say? It's God's will."
The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.
Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
The tremor was the most powerful and deadliest since 33,000 people died in a 7.8-magnitude tremor in 1939.
Officials and medics said 20,665 people had died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at 24,218.
"People who didn't die from the earthquake were left to die in the cold," Hakan Tanriverdi told AFP in Adiyaman province.