TURKISH POLICE STOP QUAKE DEMO BY FIRING LONG MACHINE GUN BURSTS

02 May 2003 07:21:00 GMT
Turkish police fire in air to disperse quake demo
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0267434.htm
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BINGOL, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish police fired into the air on Friday to disperse a crowd demanding tents and food after a powerful tremor destroyed their homes.

Police fired long bursts of automatic gunfire into the air as a crowd of around 1,000 demonstrators marched on the local governor's offices chanting "Government resign".

The earthquake struck the remote southeastern city of Bingol on Thursday morning, killing up to 150 and burying around 100 school children in a collapsed dormitory.

Most residents of the town spent a chilly night in the open air or under makeshift shelters of plastic sheeting.

Turkish Red Crescent officials began setting up tents and mobile kitchens in the city centre on Friday morning.

Public anger has grown that apparently shoddy construction -- much of it in state buildings -- increased the quake death toll.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0267434.htm


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83 CHILDREN TRAPPED BY QUAKE
Race to save pupils at collapsed school
By Mark Ellis, Foreign Editor
Daily Mirror
May 2, 2003
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12912361&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=83%20CHILDREN%20TRAPPED%20BY%20QUAKE

NINETY three children were pulled alive from their school after an earthquake yesterday but 83 others were still missing.

Twenty two youngsters and a teacher were among 150 people killed in the quake that struck a town of 250,000 people. Another 1,000 were injured.

The children, aged seven to 16, were asleep when their dormitory was flattened.

Last night rescuers were still tearing at the rubble with their bare hands.

They located eight children and passed water to them as they tried to get them out.

One rescued boy, 12-year-old Veysel Dagdelen, said: "My friends were calling for help as they were pulling me out."

Another survivor, Muhyettin Yakisir, said: "A stone fell on my head while I was sleeping, the bunk beds shook. Two of our friends were killed."

Rescue worker Muhsin Balgi said he had heard injured children screaming.

The 17-second tremor, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, hit the town of Bingol in south east Turkey, where 900 died in an earthquake in 1971.

The four-storey boarding school is in the nearby village of Celtiksuyu and housed children of poor Kurdish farmers.

Naim Gencgul, a 15-year-old boy, who was pulled out of the rubble with a broken arm, said: "The whole building was on top of me. We all started screaming."

Relatives rushed towards soldiers every time a rescued child was carried out on a stretcher to check if their youngsters had been saved.

The troops eventually kept them at a distance and shouted out the names of children they found.

As the rescue work continued, Turkey's housing minister, Zeki Ergezen, said: "The picture is getting increasingly serious."

Thousands of poorly-built buildings collapsed when two massive earthquakes struck western Turkey in 1999, killing 18,000 people. Last night the construction standards of the five-year-old school building were being questioned.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited the disaster zone, said shoddy materials had been used.

He added: "Investigations will be launched and the guilty will be prosecuted."

One resident of Bingol, Nazim Karabulut, described the school as a "terrible construction". Another local, Remzi Sonmez, standing in front of the collapsed dormitory where his eight-year-old son Ilhami was trapped, added: "This building is made out of dirt." Bingol's hospital was seriously damaged and many of the injured had to be treated on mattresses outside.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12912361&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=83%20CHILDREN%20TRAPPED%20BY%20QUAKE


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Hopes fade for trapped earthquake children

Hopes are fading for about 70 children trapped under the rubble of an earthquake-hit school in Turkey.

Rescuers have been listening for signs of life under the flattened school dormitory in Bingol, but the bodies of 39 children have already been found.

Bingol's governor Huseyin Avni Cos said the official death toll of the earthquake stands at 105, with about 1,000 people injured.

Officials said rescuers found five children alive and 12 dead under the dormitory, adding that more dead children were inside.

Rescue worker Semsettin Sayan said: "I saw an entire dormitory ward squashed under the ceiling with at least eight children crushed to death inside."

Major Oguz Tozak, in charge of a rescue team of at the school, said he feared up to two-thirds of the students still trapped may be dead. He added: "The debris is a difficult one but we have not lost hope."

Rescuers built a tunnel from the basement of the building up to the flattened third floor where two children were believed to be alive, but no one was found there.

The 198 students in the dorm, aged seven to 16, were asleep when the magnitude 6.4 quake struck on Thursday. Ninety children have been rescued alive from the rubble, leaving about 70 still unaccounted for.

© Associated Press


Story filed: 08:44 Friday 2nd May 2003

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