BINGOL (Turkey) May 2: The death toll in a powerful earthquake which jolted the eastern Turkish province of Bingol has climbed to 127, local officials said Friday.

There was no change in the number of the injured, which stood at 537, the crisis desk in Bingol city said.

The tremor, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, struck the mainly Kurdish region early on Thursday, trapping some 200 people under collapsed buildings.

Most of them were children who were asleep in their dormitories at a boarding school in the village of Celtiksuyu when the quake struck.

Bingol’s deputy governor Ahmet Aydin told Anatolia news agency that 117 of the pupils in Celtiksuyu survived the disaster, while 46 children and one teacher were killed.

He estimated that up to 40 children were still buried, but rescuers said they were losing hope of pulling out more survivors.

A protest over the official handling of the disaster boiled over into violent clashes between police and quake victims.

Rescuers working around-the-clock in the wreckage of a boarding school in the village of Celtiksuyu managed to pull out only one survivor by Friday evening and admitted they were starting to lose hope.

Six other children were rescued overnight, and 21 bodies recovered.

Cries for help from under the rubble that had led rescuers to scores of survivors died away Friday and heavy earth-moving machines were given the go-ahead to start removing the debris.

“Neither the listening devices nor the dogs were able to detect any sound. I cannot say I am hopeful but there is always a chance and we will work until the end,” one rescuer said.

Another added: “The possibility of finding people alive is now very low.”

Parents watched with heavy hearts and tearful eyes as bulldozers and cranes moved into the wreckage.

“My world has been darkened but hope in Allah should never die,” Gazal Gunanan, a sobbing Kurdish mother said in broken Turkish.

Angry parents and experts have blamed the disaster at the boarding school on poor building standards, and Erdogan promised to launch an investigation into the company that built the school.

Disregard for building regulations and widespread fraud in Turkey’s construction sector has long been blamed for thousands of casualties that the quake-prone country has suffered in recent years.—AFP