KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkiye — Search and rescue dogs have been working around the clock amid the rubble of collapsed buildings searching for trapped survivors, after earthquakes hit southeastern Turkiye and Syria.

In the heavily damaged city center of Kahramanmaras, the capital of the Turkish southern province of Kahramanmaras, sniffer dogs were leading from site to site searching for possible survivors despite the winter cold.

Outfitted with a small GPS-enabled harness and driven by its sense of smell, a German shepherd, a proud member of a rescue team from the capital Ankara, was sniffing a pile of collapsed rubble to find buried survivors.

These dogs are considered ideal for rescue work because they can smell humans trapped underneath concrete and metal, and who are generally too weak to make their presence noticed.

Yunus Goren, the German shepherd's handler, said his dog was trained for a long time to sniff the smell of humans.

"Nothing can match the canine skills to find people over a wide area in a limited amount of time," he said.

Normally a trained dog has to take a rest after several hours of work, but when the situation is too critical, the teams have to keep going on.

Goren said it is critical to find the trapped within the first 72 hours after an earthquake because the survival rate without food or water drops sharply after that.

There is also an increased risk of hypothermia for those trapped, as a result of extremely low temperatures in the quake-hit area.

Alper Ozgun, a veterinarian from Ankara, said dogs display not only a natural ability to find people but also to help and protect them.

For the latest rescue mission, Turkish social media users have hailed the sniffer dogs as "nameless heroes".

Foreign search and rescue teams have also sent sniffer dogs to help in the relief effort in Turkiye.

On Tuesday a search dog with a rescue team from Azerbaijan detected a girl named Zeynep trapped under rubble, and she was saved, local TV reported.

Xinhua