As Syria's earthquake rescue efforts near the one week mark, an unsettling silence blankets the area as a search dog sniffs around a flattened home in the coastal town of Jableh.

It has been hours since the last rescue, when two people were pulled from the rubble by rescuers with only the most basic equipment.

"There is no hope" for survivors, said Alaa Moubarak, the head of Jableh's civil defence.

"Even so, with every step, we stop and scream: is anyone alive?"

Cyprus voters on Sunday elected the former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides as the next president of the small EU member state, vowing after his win to form a government with "broad social acceptance".

Christodoulides, 49, won 51.92 percent to defeat fellow diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis, 66, who took 48.08 percent, the government election service in the south of the divided Mediterranean island announced.

The vote on Sunday, a runoff after an inconclusive first round last week, means Christodoulides will succeed two-term conservative President Nicos Anastasiades.

At Jerusalem's Western Wall plaza, a recent excavation has alarmed some heritage specialists who fear the traces of a centuries-old Arab neighbourhood razed by Israel may disappear.

There are no signs on the expansive plaza to recall the history of the Mughrabi neighbourhood, or Moroccan quarter, which was demolished by Israeli forces after they captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The area now bustles with tourists and worshippers who cross the stone square to the Western Wall, which marks the holiest site where Jews can pray.

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."

Cyprus holds a tightly fought presidential election on Sunday between two diplomats, each seeking to persuade undecided voters that he is the best choice to govern the European Union member.

"Some people are going to the polls voting for someone who is the least worse candidate, a characteristic in most elections but more so in this one," said Andreas Theophanous of the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs.

Former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides, 49, faces 66-year-old career diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis after last weekend's first round.

Tuba Yolcu is desperate for news of her missing aunt and scours a sports hall where victims of a powerful earthquake that hit her hometown in Turkey lie in body bags.

"We hear (the authorities) will no longer keep the bodies waiting after a certain period of time, they say they will take them and bury them," she said.

"God willing we will find her," Yolcu said, with worry etched on her face.

Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor struck Kahramanmaras in the country's southeast, unleashing catastrophe in the region and Syria, killing at least 28,000 people.

Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied in central Tel Aviv Saturday for a sixth straight week against controversial legal reforms being pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

"Democracy!" protesters chanted to the beat of drums in the coastal city, with many in the vast crowd waving blue and white Israeli flags, and others carrying rainbow LGBTQ or Palestinian banners.

"We're not going to give up," some shouted.

The UN denounced Sunday a failure to get desperately needed aid to war-torn regions of Syria, while warning that the death toll of over 33,000 from an earthquake that also devastated Turkey could double.

A UN convoy with supplies for northwest Syria arrived via Turkey, but the agency's relief chief Martin Griffiths said much more was needed for millions whose homes were destroyed.

"We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn't arrived," Griffiths said on Twitter.

Rescuers pulled a two-month-old baby and an elderly woman from the rubble on Saturday, five days after an earthquake devastated Turkey and Syria, leaving more than 25,000 dead.

Tens of thousands of local and international rescue workers are still scouring through flattened neighbourhoods despite freezing weather that has compounded the misery of millions now in desperate need of aid.

However, Austrian soldiers and German rescue workers called off their searches for several hours in southern Hatay, citing a difficult security situation and clashes between local groups.

An eight-year-old boy has died of his injuries from a car ramming attack on a bus stop in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem that also killed his brother, a hospital said on Saturday.

It takes the total killed to three in the attack on Friday in Ramot, a Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

"Eight-year-old Asher Menahem Paley, who was seriously injured in the Ramot attack, has died," Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital said in a statement.