Ali Erbay, the chief prosecutor of the quake-hit eastern province of Bingol, told AFP the investigation would cover companies which built both public buildings and private properties that were flattened in the quake.

The death toll in the quake, which struck early Thursday with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale, has risen to 176, many of them children, officials said Monday.

The disaster triggered a public outcry over shoddy construction, with charges that there would have been fewer casualties if buildings had been properly built.

Erbay said he had issued an arrest warrant for the owner of the firm which built the boarding school in the village of Celtiksuyu, where 84 children and a teacher were crushed to death under tons of concrete, while about 100 others were rescued.

"I think that he was at fault and has responsibility for the deaths of many people," Erbay said in a telephone interview.

He said he had yet to formally indict Serafettin Bozkus, the owner of the Boskus Insaat company which built the school, adding that the charges would be based on articles related to causing death by negligence.

Under the toughest of the laws, he could face at least four years in prison if found guilty, Erbay said.

Even before the quake, the company has been banned for one year from public tenders for over-billing.

The school tragedy sparked heated debate over the poor quality of construction in quake-prone Turkey and the inefficiency of state control, a problem which first came to public attention in 1999 when two quakes killed some 20,000 people in the country's northwest.

Turkey has since tightened building regulations, but the authorities have often failed to enforce the laws in the construction sector, which is plagued by corruption.

Companies often disregard regulations and use sub-standard materials -- particularly in the construction of public buildings -- while authorities fail to enforce the law and sometimes collude with fraudulent contractors.

US President George W. Bush telephoned Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to offer his condolences and US assistance.

Bush "was particularly saddened by the children that were killed and injured in the earthquake, and let (Sezer) know that the United States stands ready to help," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

The cabinet met in Ankara Monday under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to review the situation.

Justice Minister and government spokesman Cemil Cicek said laws would be amended to stamp out corruption and shoddy construction practices.

"Corruption shames Turkey and we have been unable to overcome it... Work on this issue will accelerate with the Bingol quake," Cicek told reporters following the meeting.

He said the government would build about 2,600 homes for those left homeless by the tremor, which officials say razed 309 buildings and damaged more than 5,000 others.

Education Minister Huseyin Celik said he had ordered all governors in the country to conduct studies on how resilient their schools are to earthquakes.

"In line with the results, all school buildings will be reinforced against earthquakes, starting with boarding schools in risky regions," Celik told reporters in Istanbul.

But despite the pledges, the young victims of the quake wondered whether their parents would trust authorities and send them back to school.

"I do not know whether my family will send me again to a boarding school after all that happened... Continuing my education is my biggest desire," 13-year-old Yesim Gundu, who survived the disaster, told Anatolia news agency.

For scores of children in the poverty-stricken mainly Kurdish region, public boarding schools are the only way to receive education as many villages in the area are too small and scattered to have their own schools.

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