A British barber fears that up to 50 of his relatives and friends may have died in the catastrophic twin earthquakes which rocked Syria and Turkey a week ago today.
Ismail Yildiz, who has lived in Worcester since 2018, comes from the southern Turkish city of Adiyaman, which was destroyed in the quakes that have now taken over 35,000 lives.
The 37-year-old described his horrifying ordeal of waiting for news from his family said: "For the first two days, I could not reach any of them. I was worried about what happened if they were still alive or not."
Mr Yildiz is now travelling to Turkey with supplies and food in hope of helping with the rescue efforts.
The dad-of-five runs barbers in Worcester and said he is making hundreds of phone calls when he is not at work.
He said: "Everyone is scared, they're just waiting for someone to help them. If I can move one stone it will be amazing for me, to bring one person back to life."
He thinks up to 50 relatives and friends may have died in the catastrophic earthquake. Elsewhere in the UK, Suleymaniye Mosque in Hackney, east London, said one of its members lost 18 relatives in the earthquakes.
A British software developer who survived the earthquake in Turkey told The Mirror of his horror hearing people buried alive under the concrete.
Timothy Whiting, 29, has lived in the wider region for the past five years and was visiting Antakya, in the country's south, when the earthquakes hit.
The town has now turned out to be one of the worst affected in the whole country.
He said: "People were picking up bits of the wrought iron that had fallen down to hit the concrete. It was just absolutely hopeless. There was no one in uniform and I just couldn't believe it.
"Multi-storey blocks were flattened and that was really distressing because you just knew every single block had tonnes of people under."
The window for pulling people alive from the wreckage is "almost at an end", according to experts.
The chances of people still trapped in the rubble surviving after nine days are close to zero, Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico told Sky News.
David Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, also said the odds were made worse by the poor construction of many buildings in Syria and Turkey.
