Sleepless and shivering Turks tended the living yesterday and buried the dead from a powerful earthquake which killed 44 people and injured more than 300.
"We're still living, but it's like we're dead," said Ismail Karagoz, mourning the loss of neighbors and the livestock locals depend on for their living.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mourners in Sultandagi gathered for a funeral of six people killed in the quake.
In nearby Eber, civil defense teams had called off rescue efforts late on Sunday, nearly 12 hours after the quake struck the mainly agricultural province of Afyon, about 250km southwest of the capital Ankara.
Rescue workers said buildings made of sun-dried bricks that collapsed in the tremors had become piles of rubble and dust, leaving none of the airpockets needed to keep victims alive.
Turkish seismologists said the quake measured 6.0 on the Richter scale. It was followed by waves of aftershocks, some of them fierce.
Authorities, under fire for responding too slowly to two major earthquakes in 1999 that killed about 18,000 people, rushed mobile soup kitchens, prefabricated homes, food and blankets to the region.
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