Hope runs out for waiting relatives

"Who should I pray for?" asked Rustu Korkmazer, Imam of the stricken Turkish town of Adapazari. "Which of the thousand dead should I rush to?"

His old eyes moist with sadness, Korkmazer surveys rows of newly-dug trenches and the dusty mounds of fresh graves in what was an open field on the city outskirts.

Each mound is topped with a small stick bearing a tiny slip of white paper. Scrawled on the paper, often almost illegibly, is the name of the victim - one of so many thousands killed in Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

Adapazari is losing hope. The last person to be brought out of the rubble of a devastated house alive was rescued on Thursday evening. Since then, only bodies have been found.

Burial must be quick. The danger of disease now looms large and religious authorities have given leave for bodies to be buried without full services.

They issued a ruling on Thursday that in the present circumstances, men and women could be buried together, bodies could be interred in one cloth instead of three and corpses that were bloated or smelling could be washed in sand if no water were available. Relatives arrive in a constant stream and stand at the graves offering their own prayers. Their eyes are red from days of waiting and days of weeping.

For some victims, without surviving relatives, there may be no-one to weep or pray.

One row is taken up by an entire family of five.

A red truck carrying newly uncovered victims teeters up the narrow dusty path to the Erenler cemetery. Men in green surgical costumes, masked and gloved, jump down and begin unloading corpses.

There are no traditional white shrouds. Most of the bodies are enclosed in white zip-up body bags.

Others are bundled in blankets in scenes acted out at cemeteries throughout northern Turkey this week.

The pungent smell of death mixed with the acrid stench of disinfectant emanates from the graves.

Dilek Aktas, a university student, had come to bury her 34-year-old cousin, a mother of three.

"We stood by her apartment for three days. They pulled out her husband and her three children, one a baby. Last night, they said they had given her up for dead."

She was brought up from the rubble this morning.

The US was ready to supply tens of thousands of body bags as part of relief efforts, a senior US official said yesterday.

Ms Hattie Babbitt, deputy administrator for the US Agency for International Development which is co-ordinating Washington's disaster assistance, said the military had already sent 5,000 body bags to Turkey.

"We can supply tens of thousands more as need to be provided," she said.

The US has provided about $3 million in assistance, including money sent to help the Turkish Red Crescent, the deployment of search and rescue teams, temporary housing, medicine and medical equipment, water purification devices and transportation for relief supplies, Ms Babbitt said.