A Turkish father holds the hand of his 15-year-old daughter amongst wreckage caused by a devastating earthquake in Türkiye.
Her hand is the only thing visible after her body was crushed by concrete.
She didn't make it out alive, but he refuses to let go.
An image taken by a drone shows the man sitting still on a large pile of rubble as rescue teams search frantically around him.
Drone footage reveals the widespread damage the strong quake and its aftershocks caused, with buildings reduced to rubble as far as the eye can see.
Photos and videos are detailing the devastation Türkiye and Syria are experiencing after an earthquake killed more than 20,000 people.
CONTENT WARNING: This story contains photos and videos that some readers may find distressing.
The unspeakable personal toll of the earthquake
Mesut Hancer sat alone in the freezing cold on a pile of broken bricks that were once his home, oblivious to the world and overwhelmed by grief.
His daughter, Irmak, was dead. But he refused to let her go, caressing the fingers peeking out from a mattress the girl was asleep on when the first pre-dawn tremor struck on Monday.
There were no rescue teams. Survivors were frantically clawing their way through the rubble to find loved ones, bits of their homes thrown out onto the debris-strewn street.
Bed frames lay on top of shattered balconies. Torn clothes and toys told the tale of lives lost.
It was too late for Irmak, one of nearly 20,000 people confirmed to have died in the most powerful earthquake to strike Türkiye and Syria in nearly a century.
Capturing the scale of devastation
Reporting from Iskanderum, The ABC's Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop says rescue crews are still searching the wreckage.
"In the port city of Iskanderun you smell them before you see them, body after body pulled from the rubble and delivered every few minutes to the front doors of the hospital," he reports for AM.
"The cries of grief follow them, this woman screams 'my brother is gone' as their sister perches by the hospital and sobs. 'They couldn't save my brother', she tells me, five floors collapsed on him.
"The rescue team came but they didn't try to get him out because they didn't hear a voice."
This is what the earthquake wreckage looks like.
Miraculous rescues bring hope
Amongst the grief and devastation, stories of miraculous survival have emerged.
Here's one from Sean Rubinzstein-Dunlop.
"This good Samaritan brought 10 excavators from the nearby city of Adana, and it's found a man alive under the rubble. 'Wherever we see the most gaps in the rubble we try to go in there', he tells me.
"'When we first came here the police came with dogs and told us there was no one alive under the rubble, but people there and relatives told us there might be someone alive there, we stopped to listen and heard a noise and we found him.'"
These are some other stories that have come out.
ABC/AFP
