GAZIANTEP (Turkey): The MAS-01 SMART team found six bodies of earthquake victims in a seven-storey hotel and residential building that collapsed in Nurdagi here on Friday.

Five bodies – a woman and four men – believed to be part of a family, were found at 9.30am local time (2.30pm in Malaysia) while the sixth body, of a woman, was found at 2.10pm.

The search and rescue (SAR) team from Malaysia was deployed to Turkey on Monday.

On Wednesday, the Malaysian government deployed another SAR team consisting of 20 members of the Special Malaysia Search and Rescue Team (SMART), 30 members of the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department (JBPM) and 20 Civil Defence Force (APM) officers.

Also joining the team were two media personnel from Bernama and a cameraman from Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM).

Nurdagi is one of the areas in Gaziantep that was badly affected following the strong earthquake that hit southern Turkey on Monday.

Upon arrival on Friday at 3am local time, the team found that the earthquake had ripped Nurdagi town as residential buildings up to seven storeys high had collapsed.

About 100 victims were believed to have been killed in the area assigned to the MAS-01 SMART team.

The chances of finding any victims alive was very slim due to them being trapped for a long time and extreme cold weather with readings as low as 3° Celsius.

Most of the survivors are still in the area and taking shelter in tents provided by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (Afad), a Turkish government disaster management agency.

Following the extreme cold weather, many of them are seen sleeping or gathering by a fire to warm themselves.

A strong earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Monday.

The death toll in Turkey continued to rise to 20,318 while more than 80,000 others were injured.

Turkey has declared a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces.