Turkish rescue workers battled last night to find 84 children buried under the rubble of a school boarding house that collapsed during an earthquake which killed more than 100 people.
Rescue workers toiling under floodlights pulled out at least one child still alive and three corpses during the early part of the night as the number of children confirmed dead reached 21. One teacher was also killed.
Ninety-three children had been saved and 84 remained unaccounted for, according to a megaphone announcement at the scene last night.
The shabbily built dormitory block near the city of Bingol, 690 km east of the capital Ankara, was just one of more than two dozen large buildings destroyed by a morning quake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale.
Terrified parents kept up a vigil, wailing and praying. ”My dead son, let me be sacrificed instead,” sobbed Cevriye Bartir, mother of missing 15-year-old Sinan, as she sat on the step of a fire engine and sang a Kurdish mourning song.
In the centre of Bingol, a mainly Kurdish city of 250 000, many settled down to spend the night outdoors or in tents provided by aid organisations. Aftershocks, of which there have been more than 200, rippled underfoot.
The continued tremors hindered attempts by rescuers to reach towns and villages around the region where more casualties were reported.
”There are around 150 of our little ones there … May God preserve us from the worst,” said the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, before he flew into the stricken city yesterday.
At the boarding house, rescue workers armed with jack-hammers and winches tried to find a way through to the children, aged between 7 and 16, whose frightened voices they could hear.
Rescuers said they had found at least eight children alive under the rubble. One child had his feet crushed, but the others were in good condition and had received water.
Turkish television showed weeping, hysterical parents being stopped by soldiers from climbing into the rubble to dig out their children with their hands. Rescuers warned that crowd noise was making it impossible for them to listen for cries of help.
The four concrete floors of the building lay squashed flat on top of one another. A flight of stairs and canopy in front of what had once been the front doors remained in place.
”I didn’t understand what happened. I saw the ceiling coming toward me,” said Mustafa Gunala, an 11-year-old survivor. ”The school caretaker used the broken railings of the staircase to pull me out.
Veysel Dagdeviren (12) who suffered a broken arm, said: ”My friends were asking me to help them as I was being pulled out. They are still inside. Save them!”
The dormitory provided free accommodation to children from outlying villages who were too poor to have their own schools.
Desperate parents rushed towards each stretcher as it was carried out of the rubble. There were cheers as rescue workers pulled one dazed boy from the ruined building and carried him to an ambulance.
Some survivors were saved by steel wardrobes which prevented concrete blocks crushing them. ”I was frightened but comfortable – the wardrobes saved me and my friends,” said Ali Kosele (16) who was trapped for eight hours.
There was anger, too, that a public building should have proved so flimsy in a region known for its earthquakes. ”The stable I built did not collapse, but the school did,” said Abdullah Gunala, a farmer, whose son survived.
Erdogan admitted shoddy materials had been used and said inspections had not been carried out. ”Investigations will be launched and the guilty will be prosecuted,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â