Rescuers battle to find Turk quake survivors, death toll jumps to 432

The devastating earthquake in eastern Turkey has now caused 432 deaths, as rescuers frantically search for survivors.

ERCIS, TURKEY: Rescuers pulled a two-week-old baby girl alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment block on Tuesday as they battled to find survivors from a earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed at least 432 people and left thousands homeless.

The baby's mother and a grandmother were also brought out
alive on stretchers to jubilant cries from onlookers who
followed the dramatic rescue under cold, pouring rain.

"It's a miracle!", said Senol Yigit, the uncle of the baby,
Azra, whose name means purity or untouched in Arabic. "I'm so
happy. What can I say. We have been waiting for two days. We had
lost hope when we first saw the building," he said sobbing.

However, hope of finding more people alive under tonnes of
rubble faded with every passing hour as rescuers pulled out more
bodies.

Thousands slept for a second night in crowded tents or
huddled around fires and in cars across a region rattled by
aftershocks in Van province, near the Iranian border.

With victims accusing the central government of being slow
in delivering aid to a region inhabited mostly by minority
Kurds, Ankara said it was sending more tents and blankets. In
some distribution centres, fighting broke out among desperate
victims to grab tents from the overwhelmed Red Crescent.

The prime minister's Disaster and Emergency Administration
said priority should be given to delivering tents, blankets,
sleeping bags, water and food to the victims.

"We have no tents, everybody is living outdoors. Van has
collapsed psychologically, life has stopped. Tens of thousands
are on the streets. Everybody is in panic," Kemal Balci, a
construction worker said as he awaited news on friends injured
in the quake at a hospital in the city of Van.

"Aid has been arriving late. Van has been reduced to zero.
We have no jobs, no bread, no water and there are nine members
in my family. If the government doesn't give a hand to Van it
will be like Afghanistan. Van has been pushed back 100 years."

The 7.2-magnitude quake, Turkey's most powerful in a decade,
is one more affliction for Kurds, the dominant ethnic group in
impoverished southeast Turkey, where more than 40,000 people
have been killed in a three-decade-long separatist insurgency.

Quake rescue efforts focused on Ercis, a town of 100,000
that was worst hit, and the provincial capital Van, which has a
population of one million.

You can view a slideshow of pictures from the quake here.