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An 18-year-old man was pulled from the rubble of a building in southern Turkey, the third rescue on Tuesday and some 198 hours after a devastating earthquake as aid workers shifted focus to those across Turkey and Syria left homeless in the bitter cold.

Muhammed Cafer, whose rescue was reported by broadcaster CNN Turk, could be seen moving his fingers as he was carried away, after surviving the huge Feb. 6 earthquake and major aftershock hours later.

It was one of the deadliest tremors in Turkey's modern history, with the combined death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria now exceeding 37,000.

A little earlier, rescuers pulled two brothers alive from the ruins of an apartment block in Turkey's Kahramanmaras province, who Anadolu news agency named as 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his brother, 21-year-old Baki Yeninar. They were taken to hospital although their condition was unclear.

Rescuers again worked through the night to rescue people clinging to life. But some teams have started scaling back operations as low temperatures reduced the already slim chances of survival. Some Polish rescuers, among many multinational teams that flew in, announcing they would leave on Wednesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, a boy and a man were saved in hard-hit Kahramanmaras, while rescuers were still trying to reach a grandmother, mother and daughter from one family who appeared to have survived in the broken masonry of a building.

In the shattered Syrian city of Aleppo, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Monday that rescue phase was "coming to a close", with the focus turning to shelter, food and schooling.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to allow more U.N. aid to enter from Turkey, diplomats said late on Monday, helping those in devastated northwest Syria, a region that has receive little aid so far.