Many of the victims were feared to be children at a boarding school, who were asleep in their dormitories when the quake struck in the dead of night.

Industry and Trade Minister Ali Coskun told Anatolia news agency that 84 people were confirmed dead and 390 injured in the quake which unleashed its force, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, on the mainly Kurdish province of Bingol.

But fears were rife that the death toll would rise over 100 as rescue workers raced against time to save the lives of scores of people still trapped under the ruins of buildings.

"May God protect us from worse. All our efforts are now concentrated on saving our children from the rubble," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Anatolia in Bingol where he was overseeing rescue efforts.

He said that according to the information he had received, between 150 and 200 people were still buried under rubble.

More than 100 children were believed to be stuck under tons of concrete after their four-storey boarding school collapsed in Celtiksuyu, on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Bingol.

Around 69 of the school's 200 pupils had been dug out alive, but 25 had died, Anatolia said.

Rescue workers, meanwhile, still hoped to find more survivors in the debris of the building.

"We have detected students who are alive. God willing we hope we will save about 50 children. They are trapped lying in their beds," rescuer Muhsin Balci told NTV.

A 12-year-old boy, who survived relatively unscathed, with only a broken arm, begged rescuers to help his fellow pupils.

"My friends were begging me to help them as I was being pulled out. They are still inside. Save them!" Veysel Dagdeviren was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

Civil defence teams and soldiers swarmed over the concrete blocks, as hundreds of onlookers and weeping and wailing parents crowded around to follow the rescue effort.

Some relatives attempted to climb onto the wreckage to help in the search, but troops held them back. At least one bulldozer started to clear rubble from the building.

The quake -- the deadliest since 1999 when two major tremors killed 20,000 people in the country's northwest -- once again shone the spotlight on the shoddy building practices blamed by many for the extent of the damage wreaked by the quake.

"The stable that I built with my own hands did not collapse, but the school did," an angry father of one of the rescued children, Abdullah Gunal, told Anatolia.

Nuray Aydinoglu from the Istanbul seismological institute emphasised that proper enforcement of construction rules, tightened after the 1999 disasters, could have prevented future tragedies.

"Unfortunately, the efficiency of engineers and construction companies that implement the projects has never been seriously taken up in Turkey," he told a press conference in Istanbul.

"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.

Ten multi-storey buildings collapsed in Bingol city.

Local officials said 24 people had been pulled out alive from under debris in Bingol but rescue workers had also retrieved 40 to 45 bodies.

Outlying villages also reported heavy damage, with electricity and phone lines down in many places.

Some casualties were transferred to nearby provinces as staff at the main hospital in Bingol city treated patients in the grounds for fear of aftershocks.

The Turkish Red Crescent rushed thousands of blankets, tents, food stufss, and teams, equipped with sniffer dogs, to the region.

Several European countries made offers of help.

Greece said it would send 300,000 euros of emergency aid and 25 rescue workers, while Germany proposed sending a specialised team of rescuers and dogs to help locate people trapped under the rubble.

But Erdogan said the country was capaple of dealing with the tragedy.

"The (Turkish) Red Crescent received such offers but at present there is no such need. Turkey is in a position to handle it," he said.

The quake, which struck at 3:27 am (0037 GMT) and was felt in several neighbouring provinces, had its epicentre 16 kilometres (10 miles) northeast of Bingol, according to the Istanbul seismological institute.

Turkey is criss-crossed by active faultlines, including one in northern Anatolia which caused two major quakes in August and November 1999, east of the Marmara Sea, killing 20,000.

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 eastern province.

SPACE.WIRE