Turks sift rubble for trapped children

BINGOL, Turkey -- Clashes erupted today between police and Kurds over shortages of earthquake relief supplies as rescue workers kept searching for dozens of children in the rubble of a collapsed school dormitory.

Thirty-four students were still missing a day after the quake, which killed at least 105 people and injured 1,000 across southeastern Turkey, a mainly rural area that is home to a large Kurdish population.

The quake struck while the children were asleep. Of 198 children, 34 students were still missing after 117 were rescued and 47 were found dead, rescue officials at the site said.

Rescuers began using cranes and other heavy equipment to lift the debris, a sign they had little hope of finding more survivors.

Ahmet Aydin, in charge of the emergency center at the site, said dogs and electronic equipment were no longer picking up any signs of life.

"This is still a search and rescue operation," Aydin said.

One boy, Enef Gunce, was rescued this morning after spending more than 30 hours under the debris. Weary rescuers applauded as Gunce, apparently with only slight injuries, was carried out of the rubble on a stretcher and quickly put in ambulance.

At a funeral in the village of Karderslerkoyu, farmers screamed as they lifted the white burial shroud that covered the chubby face and blonde hair of 14-year-old Erhan Berk, found dead Friday in the school's debris.

The children, aged 7 to 16, were mostly sons of poor farmers from surrounding villages who have no way to transport them back and forth to school every day.

The dormitory is Celtiksuyu, a village outside Bingol, a city of 250,000 where the quake was strongest. On Friday, demonstrators protesting the lack of tents, food and water clashed with police in Bingol, 430 miles east of Ankara.

Police fired into the air with rifles after protesters attacked police cars and anti-riot vehicles in the city of Bingol. Some protesters ripped stones from the streets and threw them at the governor's building.

At least five policemen and three reporters were injured and scores were detained, Bingol governor Huseyin Avni Cos said. An angry crowd kicked and punched several reporters outside the governor's office, accusing them of being biased against them, before soldiers pushed them back.

Police manning heavy machine guns on top of armored vehicles patrolled the streets of the city as clashes spread to the side streets with Kurdish youths stoning police vehicles.

Hundreds of paramilitary troops armed with automatic weapons were called in as reinforcements.

Soldiers took over from police in the streets of Bingol to prevent further clashes since demonstrators were particularly angry at police for firing shots in the air when protesters gathered outside Cos' office demanding his resignation. Several protesters were injured by a speeding police van that drove through the crowd.

There is deep distrust between Kurds and security forces in Turkey's east after a 15-year Kurdish rebel war and ensuing government crackdown left 37,000 dead and millions displaced.

Cos said Kurdish rebels were taking advantage of the quake to raise tensions, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the clashes were "acts of serious provocation and exploitation."

Erdogan defended the police's decision to open fire in the air, although he announced that the Bingol chief of police had been fired after the clashes.

"We just came here to get tents. But they started firing on us," said protester Ramazan Yararli. A Muslim cleric used his mosque's loudspeaker to appeal for calm, while police told the crowd to wait in front of their homes for aid to be distributed.

The Turkish Red Crescent has sent 3,700 tents and 13,000 blankets to the region, but Cos said he had only handed out 1,200 so far because he wanted the distribution to be fair. He said 20,000 more tents were needed. Food and drinking water are also insufficient, officials said.

Much of the country sits atop the active North Anatolian fault and tremors are frequent. A 1971 quake in Bingol killed 900 people.

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