TURKEY: Earthquakes don't kill people in Turkey. Builders do. So residents of Celtiksuyu told Nicholas Birch.
Some 36 hours after an earthquake reduced Celtiksuyu school dormitory to a mass of smashed concrete and twisted metal, Ahmet Cakir is one of among 30 families still awaiting news of their children.
He has all but lost hope of seeing his 14-year-old son Recep alive. He watches distractedly as a rescue team, white with dust, carries a small bundle down to the waiting ambulance. Crowds form. One young woman, weeping, breaks through the double cordon of soldiers and rushes to look.
In vain. The child is dead.
"As a rescue worker, I have to be optimistic," says Mehmet Tanrisever.
"But the voices beneath the rubble have stopped. The chances of finding survivors now are slim." Standing behind the line of soldiers, Recep Cakir's grandmother blames herself for what has happened.
"We were hoping Recep would have a better life than us. He wanted to be a teacher," she says. "If only we had kept him at home with us."
There were 13 children from Garipkoyin village in the dormitory when the earthquake struck. Four were saved. Seven died. Two remain inside.
"Do you think the murderers who built this place sent their children to school here," asks Mr Feyzi Ketenal, a neighbour of the Cakirs. "Of course not. This is a place for poor kids." Mr Ketenal's son, Serhat, has not yet been found.
Everywhere in Celtiksuyu and the nearby town of Bingol, evidence of criminally incompetent building leaps to the eye.
In the Saray district of Bingol, apartment blocks built 20 years ago have survived with barely a scratch.
Just over the road, buildings constructed to house villagers fleeing the civil war that crippled this region until three years ago have been reduced to dust.
There is little affection here for the organs of the Turkish state. Fresh memories of Ankara's frequently brutal repression of Kurdish separatist guerrillas may go some way towards explaining the outburst of violence which shook the town this morning.
Crowds of around 1,000 gathered around the governor's office to protest the slow delivery of tents and first aid, and call for the resignation of the governor and local MP.
A police vehicle drove at speed into the crowd, injuring several and enraging onlookers.
The situation further deteriorated when members of Ozel Tim, Turkey's feared paramilitary police force, began shooting into the air to force crowds back.
While Turkey's Prime Minister Mr Tayyip Erdogan blamed the riots which followed on "acts of serious provocation and exploitation", eyewitnesses are less sure.
"I was standing within two metres of \ Feyzi Berdibek when the shooting started," said Mr Selman Cakmak. "I clearly heard him tell the police chief to do 'whatever is necessary'."
Another young man, who showed me three used cartridges he claimed had been fired that morning, had a different version of events.
"The trouble started when a panicked soldier punched an old man to the ground," he explained. "Bystanders attacked him, but he managed to get away. That's when the shooting started."
Bursts of machine-gun fire echoed around the streets for the next two or three minutes.
"We came for tents and all we got were bullets," said Mr Bedri Piskin.
Tensions were still high at nightfall. Streets were blocked with official cars, their windscreens smashed. At least 150 soldiers surrounded the governor's office until crowds dispersed at around 6 p.m.
The reasons locals gave for their anger were various and often contradictory.
Some said that, despite the fact their houses were uninhabitable, they still had not received tents.
"I have four children under the age of six," said Mrs Hatice Ergun. "My house is too dangerous to stay in tonight. Three times I asked the Red Crescent for a tent. They told me my identity card was out of date and sent me away."
She will be sleeping in a shed in her backyard this evening. Her elderly father and uncles will be sleeping outside.
Mr Yuksel Tahtar, a local member of a Kurdish party threatened with closure, thinks the distribution of tents and aid has been as riddled with corruption as the construction business.
"Who gets help? People with connections. The poor go without."
The mainly youthful crowd surrounding the governorate this afternoon had other complaints. "The Turkish media has been reporting that these riots were about bread," says Mr Selman Cakmak.
"What do they think we are? Animals? It's as though they thought we came from a different planet."
Like many I spoke to, Mr Cakmak insisted the riots had caused the death of "up to eight people". These reports could not be independently confirmed. Kanal 7 TV did, however, show images of men lying on the ground, apparently wounded by bullets.