The death toll from a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria will “double or more” from its current level of 28,000, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has said.

Griffiths arrived on Saturday in Turkey’s southern city of Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of the first 7.8-magnitude tremor that upturned millions of lives in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.

He said of the death toll in an interview with Sky News on Saturday: “I think it is difficult to estimate precisely as we need to get under the rubble but I’m sure it will double or more.”

“We haven’t really begun to count the number of dead,” he said.

Officials and medics said 24,617 people were killed in Turkey and 3,574 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at 28,191.