BBC News Online: World: Europe

Homeless suffer as quake toll rises

Thousands of people remain homeless in poor weather conditions after last week's earthquake in north-west Turkey.

The death toll continues to rise, with official figures on Friday standing at 675 dead - up 125 from Tuesday - and 4,800 injured.

Almost all of the buildings are collapsed or uninhabitable in the city of Duzce - the quake's epicentre - about 111 miles east of Istanbul.

Officials say nearly half the 80,000 inhabitants have left the crumbled city. But they still face serious difficulties in finding housing for the remaining homeless in Duzce and surrounding towns.

People have been spending cold nights in tents or under lean-tos of plastic and timber.


The authorities had already been struggling to house the 500,000 people left homeless by a much worse quake which hit the region in August, killing 17,000 people.

An official statement said that more than 18,000 tents had been delivered to ruined towns and villages since November's quake.

But reports from the region said a shortage of shelter was provoking protests from increasingly-frustrated survivors.

The province's governor, Nusret Miroglu, on Friday pledged to try to get the homeless out of tents and into better shelter.

The Anatolia news agency reported that the government was planning to shelter some 8,000 quake victims in public housing along Turkey's Mediterranean coast, hundreds of miles south of the quake zone.

In all, 750 buildings have collapsed - leading to fresh anger over the quality of Turkey's housing.

Search and rescue operations continued in the disaster area on Friday, but relief workers and officials said that any rescue would be a miracle.

Nearly 400 foreign rescuers have left the area, leaving 1,300 others continuing to work alongside more than 12,000 Turkish colleagues.

The area is continuing to suffer aftershocks. Fifteen struck since late Thursday, the strongest reaching 4.3 on the Richter scale, on top of hundreds of earlier tremors, many of which were over 5.0.

The initial quake a week ago had a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.