ERCIS, Turkey — Distraught Turkish families mourned outside a mosque or sought to identify loved ones among rows of bodies Monday as rescue workers scoured debris for survivors after a 7.2-magnitude quake that killed at least 279 people.
Rescue teams with generator-powered floodlights worked into the night in the worst-hit city of Ercis, where the quake that rocked eastern Turkey on Sunday cut running water and electricity. Unnerved by more than 200 aftershocks, many residents slept outside their homes, lighting campfires to ward off the cold, as aid organizations rushed to erect tents for the homeless.
More than 1,200 doctors and rescue workers from across the country were sent to the region. Two temporary hospitals were set up in tents. Cries for help could be heard from several buildings, volunteers said.
Victims were trapped in mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris after more than a hundred buildings in two cities and mud-brick homes in nearby villages pancaked or partially collapsed in the earthquake. At least 2,262 buildings collapsed in the quake. About 80 multistory buildings collapsed in Ercis, a city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border that lies in one of Turkey’s most earthquakeprone zones.
Cranes and other heavy equipment lifted slabs of concrete, allowing residents to dig for the missing with shovels.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the quake killed 279 people and injured 1,300, and search-and-rescue efforts could end as early as today. Authorities said 10 of the dead were students learning about the Koran at a religious school that collapsed.
Although the death toll was slowly increasing, Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said it is unlikely to reach the 1,000 deaths feared Sunday.
Grieving families cried outside an Ercis mosque.
“My nephew, his wife and their child, all three dead. May God protect us from this kind of grief,” resident Kursat Lap said.
Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble late Monday. Dozens were placed in body bags or covered by blankets, laid in rows so people could search for missing relatives.
Several men carried a child’s body wrapped in a white cloth as weeping family members followed.
Still, there were some joyful moments. Yalcin Akay was dug out from a collapsed six-story building with a leg injury after he called an emergency line on his cell phone and told the operator where he was, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported. Three others, including two children, were also rescued from the same building in Ercis 20 hours after the quake struck.
Two other survivors were trapped for more than 27 hours.
Abdurrahman Antakyali, 20, was brought out of a crumbled Internet cafe after an eight-hour joint rescue effort by Turkish and Azerbaijani teams. His father and brother wept with joy as he emerged, Anatolia reported.
Tugba Altinkaynak, 21, had been at a family lunch with 12 other relatives when the temblor hit. Four relatives were pulled out alive earlier but her mother and the others were still missing late Monday. Altinkaynak, who was conscious and covered in dust, was brought out on a stretcher and rushed to an ambulance.
Aid groups scrambled to set up tents, field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or too afraid to re-enter their homes. Many exhausted residents spent a second night outside.
“We stayed outdoors all night, I could not sleep at all, my children, especially the little one, were terrified,” said Serpil Bilici of her 6-year-old daughter, Rabia. “I grabbed her and rushed out when the quake hit. We were all screaming.”
About 7,000 tents have been distributed throughout the province, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said. “Many more tents, heaters and blankets, especially since the weather will get colder, are on their way here,” he said. “There will be no shortages.”
But as darkness fell in Ercis, protests were breaking out among some families who said they had yet to be issued tents.
Temperatures in the region are forecast to drop as low as 28 degrees and it is likely to snow Wednesday, Kursat Aydin of the Turkish State Meteorological Service in Ankara said in a telephone interview.
The quake also wreaked substantial damage on the bustling larger city of Van, about 55 miles south of Ercis. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who inspected the area, said “close to all” the mud-brick homes in surrounding villages had collapsed in the temblor that also rattled parts of Iran and Armenia.
Television stations showed a collapsed apartment building in Van where rescue workers were using a crane and drills to reach survivors.
Sections of hospital buildings weakened by the shaking were closed as a precaution, Health Minister Recep Akdag told reporters in Van.
Information for this article was contributed from Ercis, Turkey, by Selcan Hacaoglu, and from Ankara, Turkey, by Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press; from Istanbul by Carsten Hoffmann and Jasper Mortimer of McClatchy Newspapers; and from Ankara, Turkey, by Emre Peker and Steve Bryant, and from Istanbul by Aydan Eksin of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/25/2011