The building worst hit by the tremor in Bingol province which measured 6.4 on the Richter scale was a public boarding school, where more than 100 students reamined trapped under tons of concrete.

"The stable that I built with my own hands did not collapse, but the school did," an angry Abdullah Gunal, the father of one of the rescued children, told Anatolia news agency as parents wept around the pile of rubble where once the school had stood.

At least 84 people, among them many children, were confirmed dead and about 400 were injured in the Bingol quake.

Lax building standards were blamed for many of the deaths in two major quakes in northwestern Turkey in August and November 1999 which killed some 20,000 people.

Turkey has since then tightened construction regulations, but experts warned Thursday that without a tough enforcement of legal requirements the quake-prone country would face greater tragedies in the future.

"Unfortunately, the efficiency of engineers and construction companies that implement the projects has never been seriously taken up in Turkey," seismologist Nuray Aydinoglu from the Kandilli observatory told a press conference in Istanbul.

He said a nationwide campaign to strengthen poorly constructed buildings should have started after the 1999 disasters.

"Probably we would not have suffered so much today if the building that caused the deaths of many of our children had been repaired," Aydinoglu said.

"This is the most important lesson that we have to learn from the quake," he added.

Turkey's construction sector is known to be among the worst affected by widespread corruption plaguing the country.

Companies often disregard building regulations -- particularly in the construction of public buildings -- as authorities fail to enforce the law and sometimes collude with fraudulent contractors.

Public buildings are the first to collapse in earthquakes.

SPACE.WIRE