The death toll in Turkey and Syria after Monday’s earthquake surpassed 20,000, which would make it among the deadliest since 2000. Photo: New York Times

Truck shortages, blocked roads and other logistical hurdles are impeding efforts by the 100,000-plus rescue personnel working in Turkey to unearth victims, bury the dead and provide aid to desperate survivors. Subfreezing temperatures and widespread shortages of two essential utilities — heating and electricity — will not make their work any easier.

Across the border in northwestern Syria, where millions displaced by the country’s civil war had been enduring a brutal winter without heating when the earthquake hit, power outages are creating fuel shortages in hospitals, according to the United Nations. Snowfall has further impeded rescue efforts there, and temperatures were forecast to dip below freezing later on Thursday after rising during the day.

The death toll in Turkey and Syria after Monday’s earthquake surpassed 20,000, which would make it among the deadliest since 2000.

In Turkey alone, the death toll reached more than 17,000 people by Thursday, matching the toll from the country’s Aug. 17, 1999, earthquake about 60 miles from Istanbul that killed nearly 17,500 people. The latest death toll also surpassed the 16,000 deaths in Japan in 2011, when a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, swept through the entire Pacific coastline.