Grief and anger as search continues

For every score of deaths, there is a survivor. Maybe Homiyet Kurt, a young girl trapped up to her neck in a mountain of rubble that once was her home in the village of Bahgecik, will be one.

Homiyet can move her left arm. She can breathe and she can drink water from a pipe lowered to her by rescuers. It is 36 hours since the earthquake struck and she is still fighting for her life.

The 23-year-old believes her father, Emin, might be trapped nearby. But she hasn't heard his voice for some time and the rescue team is working slowly, with nothing more than a pickaxe and their bare hands.

Her neighbour, Mr Omer Kahya, is less fortunate. He emerges from the back of the pile of twisted masonry in a sheet, his own bedding. His nose is broken, his face is bruised red, and his chest has turned a strange white colour. The onlookers gawp, a woman keens, anger in her voice. Her daughter cries, the menfolk sit silent, faces buried in their hands. His dead body is dumped by the roadside, to be collected when it has company.

Maybe 100 people have died here, says Mr Ahmed Kucuk, the "hoca" (prayer leader) at the mosque which stands undamaged behind the ruined apartment block. "These were holy people," he says, "they did not deserve this."

All along the road from Izmit to Golcuk, there are dozens of such heaps, each one a burial mound for an entire apartment block. The lives of men, women and children disappeared in less than a minute in one terrible rending of the earth's crust early last Tuesday morning.

Rescuers swarm over them like so many ants, risking injury from further collapses. But in the race against time, frantically searching for signs of life under masses of concrete, they are losing the battle.

Fears of further tremors have spurred tens of thousands of Turks to flee their homes. In Istanbul, they make for an extraordinary sight, whole families sleeping in the grass margins between the motorway lanes or occupying the city's elegant squares. They huddle together in solemn and dignified groups, brewing tea and listening for news on their portable radios.

Now these fears of after-shocks have been joined by concerns that Turkey's largest refinery, at Izmit, could blow up. The refinery has been on fire since Tuesday, sending huge plumes of acrid smoke into the sky for miles around.

While the rescuers struggle to free Homiyet, families scour the debris for possessions. A girl emerges with a set of glasses and plates, miraculously intact. The search throws up scraps of clothing, a sewing machine, Grollier's International American Encyclopaedia, volume one, and any number of copies of the Koran.

Nearby, anguish is turning to anger. A middle-aged man who has lost his son to the earthquake berates the crowd of onlookers. "You just come here like tourists. You are here for the show. Why don't you help to find my son? When will we get help?"

His cry is echoed by Mrs Busra Durhat, who says: "We need bread, water, shelter. Our lives are `kaput'. The government says it wants dollars and marks, but they take the money and we never see it".

On the main highway to Izmit, another body is being extruded from the crushed concrete layers of a collapsed building. Arms and heads first, the woman emerges, her hair dyed orange by tile-dust. Her skin is black, the colour of rotten fruit. At the last moment, the rescue team remembers there is dignity even in death, and covers her with a sheet. Her body is placed in a metal casket and whisked away from the media and bystanders in a truck.

Back in Bahgecik, the diggers are making progress. Homiyet can move more freely now. On the stroke of noon, she is pulled out from the wreckage and taken by ambulance to hospital. Her injuries are slight. There is no sign of her father but she manages a wan smile. She is one of the chosen few - a survivor.