Early morning earthquake kills 57 in Turkey

A powerful earthquake that buried villagers as they slept has claimed at least 51 lives in a remote part of eastern Turkey.

The shallow quake, which measured 6.0 on the Richter scale, struck near the town of Karakocan in Elazig province, at 4.32am (0232 GMT). It razed five remote mountain villages in the mainly Kurdish area and killed whole families in their beds.

"It started shaking, first slowly and then violently. I was terrified and began crying. The cupboard fell over and then the television set exploded," said Zeynep Yuksel, a teenager in Okcular, the worst-hit village.

Survivors abandoned their damaged homes and lit open-air fires in the streets to cope with the wintry cold after the quake. Search-and-rescue operations were called off after about eight hours and preparations began to bury the victims.

"According to the information we have, no one remains under the rubble. The work has been ended," said an official from a crisis desk at the provincial governor’s office.

Cemil Cicek, the Deputy Prime Minister, put the death toll at 57 as he visited the region. Crisis desks in Elazig and Ankara both said later however that the official toll stood at 51. At least four of the dead were children.

The tremor left 74 people injured, officials in Elazig said. The heaviest toll - 18 dead and some 30 houses destroyed - was in Okcular, a Kurdish settlement of some 900 people, nestled in the mountains about 1,800m (5,900ft) above sea level and accessible only by one narrow road.

"I rushed out after the tremor, looked to one side and saw nothing, then looked to the other side -- again nothing. Everything had collapsed," said a middle-age woman who did not give her name.

"I pulled out the two kids from the rubble with bare hands. They were both dead," said the woman, who lost a sister-in-law and two nephews in the quake.

Wrapped in blankets and cuddling babies, women wailed around a bonfire as Red Crescent workers erected tents and distributed food and other emergency supplies.

Villagers scrambled to recover any valuables from the debris as a flurry of aftershocks jolted the area, with the most powerful measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale.

In nearby Yukari Demirci, 15 people perished, among them a family of nine. The remaining victims were in Gocmezler, Kayalik and Yukari Kanatli.

The quake also killed many livestock, the main livelihood for locals.

Officials lamented that shoddy construction had once again exacerbated the disaster, as in many previous quakes to hit Turkey.

"Villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage, such as cracks, in buildings made of cement or stone," said Muammer Erol, the provincial governor.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, said that he had instructed the state building company to start reconstruction at once.

"Mud-brick construction is undoubtedly a local tradition. But unfortunately, it has proved to have a heavy price," he said, speaking in Ankara.

The tremor was felt in the neighbouring provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbakir and Tunceli, sending residents out onto the streets in panic.

Major earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which is crossed by several active fault-lines. Two powerful tremors in the heavily populated and industrialised northwest claimed about 20,000 lives in August and November 1999. Many deaths were blamed on sub-standard buildings, the result of widespread corruption plaguing the construction sector.