Final toll rises to 167 dead in Turkish quake as rescue effort halted at school

CELTIKSUYU, Turkey (AFP) May 04, 2003
Rescue work to look for survivors of the quake which demolished a boarding school in eastern Turkey has officially ended after the last two bodies of pupils were pulled out from under the debris, the provincial governor announced Sunday.

The final toll in Thursday's quake stood at 167 dead and around 520 injured, the governor of Bingol province Avni Cos told Anatolia news agency.

At the school in Celtiksuyu, where 198 pupils were asleep in their dormitories when the quake struck, 84 children and one teacher perished and 114 survived, he said.

With the discovery of the bodies of Alican Celik and Cihat Avci, both aged 14, rescue teams were able to end their search and allow bulldozers to move in to begin clearing the site, the Turkish news channel CNN-Turkey reported.

The quake, which measured 6.4 on the open-ended Richter scale, completely destroyed 82 homes and damaged 110 others, Cos told Anatolia.

A tremor of medium-intensity shook the Antalya region of southern Turkey on Saturday afternoon but caused no damage.

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

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