140 Schoolchildren Trapped in Rubble After Quake Hits Eastern Turkey

May 1, 2003

Some 140 children were trapped under the rubble of a boarding school which collapsed overnight when a powerful earthquake rocked Turkey's eastern province of Bingol killing up to 150 people, television stations reported here.

Housing Minister Zeki Ergezen told private NTV television that at least 150 people had been killed and more than 300 injured in the region. He gave no further details, but said the quake had wreaked considerable damage in the province.

Local authorities said around 140 children at a primary school in Celtiksuyua, a dozen kilometres (seven miles) from the provincial capital of Bingol, were missing after the earthquake measuring 6.4 on the open Richter scale levelled their four-storey boarding school.

Fifty-five children had been pulled out alive from the rubble nearly five hours after the quake which struck in the dead of night.

Parents rushed to the school where soldiers attempted to hold them back as rescuers dug through the wreckage, Anatolia news agency reported.

At least seven buildings collapsed in the centre of Bingol, NTV said.

The quake, also felt in several neighbouring provinces, hit at 3:27 am (0037 GMT), TRT public television said.

Many injured people had been hospitalized, it said. Several villages were inaccessible and the electricity was cut off.

Soldiers from the Bingol garrison were taking part in the rescue work.

There was general panic after the tremor, with people rushing out into the streets, according to scenes shown on television.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by several ministers, was to visit the stricken area on Thursday morning. The Turkish Red Crescent sent in 500 tents and thousands of blankets, NTV said.

The Strasbourg Observatory in France said the epicentre of the quake was situated in the Diyarbakir region at 38.94 degrees latitude and 40.90 longitude.

Turkey is crossed by several active faultlines including one in northern Anatolia which caused two major quakes in August and November 1999 east of the Marmara Sea in which more than 20,000 people were killed.

Bingol is situated on the eastern Anatolia fault.

On May 22, 1971 a quake measuring 6.8 on Richter claimed some 900 lives in the province according to Gulay Barbarosoglu, director of the Istanbul seismological institute.

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