As many as 100 sheep have been wiped out at a single farm following the powerful twin earthquakes that struck Turkey and neighbouring Syria on Monday.
In a video shared with the Mirror, Kamil Yavuz is seen walking around his now devastated farm in Harunusagi village, in the Malatya region of Turkey.
The 60-year-old is seen trudging through thick snow as he shows the destruction which happened in minutes when the earthquake struck.
"My friends, our sheep are under rubble. We are trying to save them from under the rubble. I can't find the words to describe this," Mr Yavuz is heard saying in the video which shows hundreds of deceased sheep piled up among hay bales and fallen bricks.
He knows they have lost 100, but fears the true toll could be up to 300.
Men are seen in the video trying to move bricks, in a bid to save as many of their livestock as possible. But the weight of the sheep plus the freezing cold conditions makes it near impossible.
Temperatures have plummeted as low as -8 in the area, hindering all rescue operations.
One sheep is seen alive, baa'ing in distress while trapped and surrounded by fallen bricks, wooden poles and debris.
"His wife has been in tears all day, they can’t move the sheep anywhere because they are so isolated, they can’t get the help. Plus they’re saying they need to sort out the people first", Mr Yavuz's son-in-law, Yucel Yavuz, says to the Mirror from his shop in Arsenal, North London.
He continues: “He’s been doing farming for a very long time, most of his life. Now half his sheep are nearly dead and he has got no barn either. This is their livelihood, gone."
At the time of writing on Tuesday afternoon, the death toll in Turkey and Syria has surged to more than 19,000
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the death toll in his country from Monday’s devastating earthquake has now reached 16,170 - bringing the combined total of fatalities in Turkey and Syria to 19,362.
State officials in Syria said earlier on Thursday the death toll in government-controlled areas stands at 1,262, while 1,930 have been reported dead in rebel-held areas in the north-west of the country by the White Helmets civil defence group.
A total of 5,158 people have been reported injured across both government-controlled and rebel-held Syria. More than 64,000 people have been injured in Turkey.
Experts have said the toll of both dead and injured is expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming days.
Roads leading into quake-stricken area of Malatya, where the farm is, have been extensively damaged, blocking most vehicle transport from entering the main cities and affecting the arrival of vital aid.
Malatya is some 150 miles from the epicentre, Kahramanmaraş, which shows just how wide-ranging the destruction from the double-blow 7.8 and 7.5-magnitude quakes have been.
