Istanbul, Turkey - More than 84,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or are heavily damaged following two huge earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks, the urban planning minister said on Friday.

More than 7,000 personnel surveyed over 684,000 buildings across 11 provinces, of which a total of 84,726 were found to have been either destroyed or heavily damaged, Murat Kurum told reporters.

The damaged buildings need to be urgently demolished, Kurum said as he urged residents to stay away from them.

The minister said the government will begin major reconstruction efforts in several hard-hit cities starting in March and pledged that new residential projects would be chosen with the utmost care and after precise ground studies.

World Palau youth lay out harmful impacts of US militarization in landmark human rights complaint

Turkish authorities have been blasted for lax enforcement of construction regulations, which may have contributed to the high death toll.

More than 50 people, including contractors, have been arrested in connection with collapsed buildings, state news agency Anadolu reported.

The first quake of magnitude 7.7 struck Turkey and Syria in the early hours of February 6. Another large tremor hit at noon that day, and there have been more than 4,700 aftershocks, disaster authority AFAD said.

In Turkey alone, 38,044 people are known to have died as of Friday.

Several thousands more perished in neighboring conflict-torn Syria, where the disaster response has been mired in international political wrangling and hindered by poor infrastructure.

Late on Thursday, two men aged 26 and 34 were pulled alive from the debris of a private hospital in Turkey's Hatay province, where they were buried for 261 hours, state news agency Anadolu reported.