ERCIS, Turkey�? Rescue workers dug deeper into collapsed buildings on Tuesday in a battle against time to find survivors from an earthquake in southeast Turkey that killed hundreds and made tens of thousands homeless.
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The Disaster and Emergency Administration said Tuesday that the death toll had risen to 366, with 1,301 injured. The prime minister's office also said that more than 2,000 buildings collapsed in the quake, which struck Van province on Sunday afternoon with a magnitude of 7.2.
Rescuers pulled more dead bodies from under the rubble of dozens of collapsed homes overnight while people slept around small fires in towns rattled by aftershocks across Van, near the Iranian border.
"Life has become hell. We are outside, the weather is cold. There are no tents," said Emin Kayram, 53, sitting by a small fire in the town of Ercis after spending the night with his family of eight in a van parked nearby.
His nephew was trapped in the rubble of a building behind him, where rescue workers have been digging through the night.
"He is 18, a student. He is still stuck in there. This is the third day but you can't lose hope. We have to wait here," he said.
Crowds formed at one demolished building where bystanders said a trapped boy had made contact by mobile phone.
As a rescue team dug at the rubble, one man screamed at the workers: "Where were you last night? I told you last night there were people here."
Casualties were concentrated so far in Ercis and the provincial capital Van, with officials checking outlying areas.
'It was like the judgment day'
A worker from one rescue team told Reuters they had pulled four dead people out of a building overnight. Another body wrapped in a yellow bag was pulled out in the morning.
"It was like the judgment day," said Mesut Ozan Yilmaz, 18, who survived for 32 hours under the rubble of a tea house where he had been passing time with friends.
Unhurt but lying on a hospital bed under a thick blanket, his face blackened by dust and dirt, Yilmaz gave a chilling account to CNN Turk of how he survived by diving under a table.
"The space we had was so narrow. People were fighting for more space to survive," Yilmaz said. "I rested my head on a dead man's foot. I know I would be dead now if I had let myself go psychologically."
As grieving families prepared to bury their dead, others kept vigil by the mounds of concrete rubble and masonry, praying rescue teams would find missing loved ones alive.
Rescue teams concentrated efforts in Ercis, a town of 100,000 that was worst hit by the tremor.
"My nephew, his wife and their child, all three dead. May God protect us from this kind of grief," resident Kursat Lap said outside a city mosque.
Story: Seismic web gave rise to Turkey's killer quakeNot enough tents
Residents spent the night outside as they were scared to return to homes which suffered damage in the quake.
"We are afraid. Tremors are happening all the time. Pieces of concrete are falling down off the buildings," said Farzande Dilmac, 70, pointing to an empty block of flats riven by large cracks.
"Our people are in a bad state, what can we do?" he said as a group of around 20 women, their heads wrapped in colored headscarves, begin wailing.
The Turkish Red Crescent distributed up to 13,000 tents, and was preparing to provide temporary shelter for about 40,000 people, although there were no reliable estimates of the number of people left destitute.
PhotoBlog: Rescue workers find survivors in collapsed buildingsThe relief agency was criticized for failing to ensure that some of the most needy, particularly in villages, received tents as temperatures plummeted overnight.
"We were sent 25 tents for 150 homes. Everybody is waiting outside, we've got small children, we've got nothing left," said Ahmet Arikes, the 60-year-old headman of Amik, a village outside Van that was reduced to rubble.
Television images showed desperate men pushing each other roughly to grab tents from the back of a Red Crescent truck.
"I didn't think the Red Crescent was successful enough in giving away tents. There is a problem on that matter," Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the ruling AK Party, told CNN Turk. "I apologize to our people."
Slideshow: Powerful earthquake strikes Turkey (on this page)Soon after, the relief agency's chairman told the news channel that 12,000 more tents would be delivered to Van on Tuesday. Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, overseeing relief operations in Van, said: "From today there will be nothing our people lack."
Ghost town
The center of Van, a city of 1 million people, resembled a ghost town with no lights in the streets or buildings. Hardly any people could be seen.
The sense of dislocation was greater in Ercis. With no homes to return to, thousands of people, mostly men, paced the streets, stopping to look at the destruction or whenever there was some commotion at a rescue operation site.
At one collapsed building on the main road leading through Ercis, the area worst hit in Sunday's quake, exhausted rescue workers shouted at crowds of men pushing forward to catch a glimpse as efforts were made to free the corpse of a woman from the rubble.
"Get back! Are you not human? Show some respect! Do we not have any honor or pride?" one rescue worker yelled.
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International offers of aid
Leaders around the world, including President Barack Obama, conveyed their condolences and offered assistance, but Erdogan said Turkey was able to cope for now. Azerbaijan, Iran and Bulgaria still sent aid, he said.
Among those offering help were Israel, Greece and Armenia, who all have had issues in their relations with Turkey.
The offer from Israel came despite a rift in relations following a 2010 Israeli navy raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that left nine Turks dead. Greece, which has a deep dispute with Turkey over the divided island of Cyprus, also offered to send a special earthquake rescue team.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic ties due to tensions over the Ottoman-era mass killings of Armenians and the conflict in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkey lies in one of the world's most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.
Istanbul, the country's largest city with more than 12 million people, lies in northwestern Turkey near a major fault line, and experts say tens of thousands could be killed if a major quake struck there.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45027050/ns/world_news-europe/
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