Turkey quake death toll rises to 13

The death toll from Turkey’s latest earthquake rose to at least 13 today as rescue workers pulled another body from the rubble.

The victims include a Japanese aid worker who came to Turkey in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake last month.

Aksit Dayi, a senior disaster management official, said today that the body of a middle-aged man had been found under one of the two collapsed hotels, the Bayram, in the eastern city of Van.

He was believed to have been in the office of an intercity bus company beneath the hotel.

Mr Dayi said rescuers could not hear any voices, “but still we are removing layers of concrete in a way as if there are survivors. We are working on the third floor now.”

Relatives of missing people huddled around campfires near the wreckage of the once five-storey Bayram Hotel as they waited for news from their loved ones throughout the night despite bitter cold as aid workers from nearby cities provided hot drinks.

It was not clear how many people were still under the rubble of the hotel but they were believed to include two Turkish journalists from the local Dogan news agency.

“We hope to finish our search by midnight Friday at the latest,” Mr Dayi said.

The hotels, apparently weakened by last month’s magnitude-7.2 earthquake, came down on Wednesday night when a magnitude-5.6 quake shook the area as many accused authorities of failing to properly inspect the buildings following the October 23 quake that killed more than 600 people.

Japanese aid worker Atsushi Miyazaki, who came to Turkey in the aftermath of last month’s earthquake to assess damage and distribute relief supplies to survivors, also became a victim of Turkey’s treacherous fault lines yesterday, when he died in hospital soon after being pulled out from the rubble of the Bayram Hotel.

His 32-year-old female colleague, Miyuki Konnai, was rescued alive from the wreckage of the same hotel late on Wednesday. She was in stable condition and was transferred to the Turkish capital, Ankara, for treatment for bruises following the quake as well as prolonged flu.

“There is nothing to be scared of,” said Murat Bozkurt, head physician of the Ataturk Training and Research Hospital. “Her condition is quite well.”