By Ali Kucukgocmen&nbsp;and&nbsp;Clodagh Kilcoyne
ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) -Turkey turned its&nbsp;focus&nbsp;to reconstruction on Wednesday, encouraging those in quake-hit areas whose buildings&nbsp;have&nbsp;been deemed safe to return&nbsp;home.
In neighbouring Syria's opposition-held northwest, which was already suffering from more than a decade of bombardment, the earthquake left many war-weary families fending for themselves amid the rubble, with international aid arriving slowly.
The combined death toll in the two countries has climbed over 41,000,&nbsp;and&nbsp;millions are in need over humanitarian aid, with many survivors having been left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures,&nbsp;and&nbsp;rescues now few&nbsp;and&nbsp;far between.
In Turkey's southern Hatay province, half of the buildings&nbsp;have&nbsp;either collapsed, been heavily damaged, or need to be demolished quickly, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu&nbsp;said.
But the government encouraged people to go back home - if they can, based on government checks.
"We want citizens to track their building's status on the online system&nbsp;and&nbsp;get back into the buildings which receive safe building report from the urbanisation ministry, in order to start getting back to normal," Tourism Minister Nuri Ersoy told a news conference in Malatya, some 160 km from the epicenter of the earthquake.
"We will quickly demolish what needs to be demolished&nbsp;and&nbsp;build safe houses," Environment&nbsp;and&nbsp;Urbanisation Minister Murat Kurum tweeted.
Meanwhile, Turkey's stock index soared almost 10% on reopening after five days of earthquake-related closure as government measures to prop equities looked to be working, but analysts warned sentiment was fragile.
"You do&nbsp;have&nbsp;to question how strong underlying sentiment is&nbsp;and&nbsp;what investors would be doing if this official support were not there... I would also question how long the&nbsp;authorities&nbsp;can continue with this support given the fragile nature of official finances,"&nbsp;said&nbsp;analyst Stuart Cole, head macro economist at Equiti Capital.
Late on Tuesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan vowed to press on with&nbsp;rescue&nbsp;and&nbsp;recovery efforts, after nine were pulled from the rubble that day.
A 42-year-old woman was&nbsp;rescued from the rubble of a building in the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras on Wednesday, almost 222 hours after a devastating earthquake struck the region, Turkish media reported.
But&nbsp;U.N.&nbsp;authorities&nbsp;have&nbsp;said&nbsp;the&nbsp;rescue&nbsp;phase&nbsp;is&nbsp;coming&nbsp;to a&nbsp;close, with the&nbsp;focus&nbsp;turning to&nbsp;shelter,&nbsp;food&nbsp;and&nbsp;schooling.
'GET US OUT!'
The Turkish toll was 35,418 killed, Erdogan&nbsp;said. More than 5,814&nbsp;have&nbsp;died in Syria, according to a Reuters tally of reports from Syrian state media&nbsp;and&nbsp;a&nbsp;U.N. agency.
In Syria, relief efforts&nbsp;have&nbsp;been hampered by a civil war that has splintered the country&nbsp;and&nbsp;divided regional&nbsp;and&nbsp;global powers. The single border crossing from Turkey to Syria was&nbsp;closed for days before&nbsp;U.N. trucks were allowed through.
On Tuesday, eight days after the quake, a second border crossing for aid delivery was opened after Syrian President Bashar al Assad gave his assent, marking a shift for Damascus which has long opposed cross-border aid deliveries to the rebel enclave.
But the move was met with scepticism&nbsp;and&nbsp;even anger by many residents of Idlib, where a bulk of the 4 million residents hail from other bombed-out provinces.
The trucks included none of the heavy equipment&nbsp;and&nbsp;machines that&nbsp;rescuers say they need to remove rubble faster &ndash;&nbsp;and&nbsp;that could&nbsp;have&nbsp;helped with reconstruction.
"What happened to us &ndash; it's the first time it's happened around the world. There was an earthquake&nbsp;and&nbsp;the international community&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;U.N. don't help,"&nbsp;said&nbsp;Raed Saleh, who heads the 'White Helmets'&nbsp;rescue&nbsp;force operating in opposition-held areas.
Walid Ibrahim lost more than two dozen of his family members &ndash; among them his brother, his cousin,&nbsp;and&nbsp;all their children. He only managed to remove their bodies from under the rubble two days after the quake.
"We were removing rock after rock&nbsp;and&nbsp;finding nothing underneath. People were under the concrete screaming, 'Get us out! Get us out!' But we'd come up with empty hands," he&nbsp;said. "Your hands alone aren't enough."
(Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily, Daren Butler, Ezgi Erkoyun, Jonathan Spicer, Timour Azhari, Mehmet Caliskan, Jake Cordell, Firas Makdesi, Ece Tobaksay, Huseyin Hayatsever, Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Ingrid Melander&nbsp;and&nbsp;Lincoln Feast; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore&nbsp;and&nbsp;Christina Fincher)

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Turkey eyes post-quake reconstruction, Syrians seek more aid