Quake death toll at 349 as burials start

Turks buried their earthquake dead yesterday as the death toll rose to 349 and rescue workers continued to scour shattered buildings…

Turks buried their earthquake dead yesterday as the death toll rose to 349 and rescue workers continued to scour shattered buildings in a race against time and weather.

A woman was pulled from the rubble more than 40 hours after being trapped in her home when it was brought down around her by the shock, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale, in the north-western Bolu province. It was Turkey's second major quake in three months.

Crowds of onlookers cheered as Mrs Saziye Bulut was plucked from the wreckage of her kitchen, where she had gone to make tea when the quake hit on Friday.

"I'll probably have to live in a tent now," she told rescue team chief Mr Turgut Ozkan as she emerged from the rubble. Recognising his voice as one of those who had talked her through the ordeal, she said, "But you must definitely come to tea."

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Elsewhere, relatives began laying to rest the victims of Friday's quake in scenes chillingly reminiscent of the aftermath of the August 17th tremor, when more than 17,000 died in the neighbouring Izmit region.

On a foggy, frosty hillside above the devastated town of Kaynasli, mourners wailed and recited verses from the Koran, surrounded by some 60 freshly dug graves.

"That can't be my son lying there. He always said we would be fine if there was an earthquake," a distraught father said.

Another mourner said he did not know how he had escaped from a coffee house where 20 people - some of them being buried as he spoke - had died.

Officials estimate the number of dead from Friday's quake to be at least 349, but the toll seems destined to rise as rescuers comb a landscape of crumbled concrete and twisted metal.

Rescue efforts were hampered overnight by freezing weather and a series of aftershocks. Doctors said the cold made it much harder to cling to life under the rubble than after the August 17th quake.

With temperatures hampering rescue work and making survival less and less likely, the government began to focus on housing those made homeless by Friday's tremor.

"Demand for tents and prefabricated houses has increased greatly, not only from those whose homes were wrecked or damaged but also others in fear of further earthquakes," the Prime Minister, Mr Bulent Ecevit, told reporters in Ankara.

For Duzce, a town of some 80,000 people, it was a second time of suffering. Some 76 people were killed and 76 buildings in the town were levelled in the previous disaster.

In a replay of the August quake, foreign aid and rescue teams have been pouring in. Among the latest was a 100-strong team from Israel, Turkey's unofficial ally, which was to set up a military field hospital in Duzce.

Another team with sniffer dogs flew in from Washington DC. It was the second American aid group to arrive.

Greece has also rushed rescuers and aid to Turkey, true to a new spirit of neighbourly help that has recently emerged between the two NATO allies after centuries of hatred.

Turkish Defence Minister Mr Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said some of the tents still arriving for victims of the August disasters had been diverted to the Duzce area.

People would be helped with the cost of moving to other areas, he said.

"Enough tents have already been sent here due to the emergency situation," he told reporters in Duzce.

Transport Minister Mr Enis Oksuz said on Saturday that the tremor could cost Turkey's fragile economy $10 billion - on top of an estimated $12 billion from the August quake.

But Mr Ecevit's government, berated by the media and public for reacting slowly to the August quake, was getting a better press this time.

"The Resurrection of the State," heralded the mainstream daily Sabah. "The state was paralysed on August 17, but this time it took control within an hour."

Despite the quake, organisers said a summit of 54 leaders, including US President Mr Bill Clinton, scheduled for Istanbul on November 18th-19th, would go ahead.

Mr Clinton was due in Ankara late on Sunday. His wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea arrived on Saturday.