Turkey calls off quake searches

Fires were lit to keep the homeless warm overnight

Turkish officials on Monday abandoned hopes of rescuing anyone else from the rubble of the earthquake that killed at least 43 people and left thousands homeless.

Soldiers and aid workers have now switched their focus to providing food and shelter for families who spent the night in tents or vehicles in sub-zero temperatures.

Deputy governor of the worst-hit central Afyon province Halil Ibrahim Turkoglu said there were no more survivors or bodies left in the rubble of about 150 collapsed buildings.

I prefer not to go home. I feel safer outside

Quake survivor Senol Gursel

"Therefore search-and-rescue efforts have finished," he said.

The quake, registering 6.0 on the Richter scale, centred on the town of Bolvadin in Afyon province, and was felt as far away as Istanbul, 500 kilometres (300 miles) to the north-west.

Dozens of aftershocks, the strongest with a magnitude of 5.3, continued to rattle the area as the night-time temperature fell to around minus 5C (23 Fahrenheit).

'Safer outside'

Municipal vehicles drove through the small town of Cay on Monday morning using loudspeakers to broadcast the names of the dead and the time and place of their funerals.

"I prefer not to go home, I feel safer outside," said Senol Gursel as he joined hundreds of people in line for a traditional Turkish breakfast of tea, bread and cheese at a crisis centre set up at a local school.

Mr Gursel said he had slept in his car while his wife and children bedded down on carpets at the school.

Aid workers there said 500 homes had been damaged or destroyed.

They included 10 concrete warehouses and shops that were part of an enterprise zone in Cay.

"There were 500 people who used to work here. It took us eight or nine years to build this up," said Mevlut Sapci, 48, one of a crowd of men staring at the wreckage.

The BBC correspondent in Istanbul, Jonny Dymond, said it was clear that the Turkish Government had launched a more organised relief effort than in 1999 when nearly 20,000 people were killed in a series of quakes.

Public Works Minister Abdulkadir Akcan said the government was sending 3,000 blankets and 1,000 tents to the region.

Workers had toiled for hours in the hope of finding more survivors, after the quake hit at 0911 (0711 GMT) on Sunday.

Greece, which historically has tense relations with Turkey, immediately offered to send rescue workers as it did in 1999.

Most of the country lies on the North Anatolian fault and minor earthquakes occur frequently.