Survivors shiver in Turkey after quake kills 51

The damage appeared worst in the Kurdish village of Okcular, which was almost razed. At least 15 of the village's 900 residents were killed, the Elazig governor's office said, and the air was thick with dust from crumpled homes and barns.

The pre-dawn earthquake caught many residents as they slept, shaking the area's poorly made buildings into piles of rubble. Panicked survivors fled into the narrow streets of this village perched on a hill in front of snow-covered mountains, with some people climbing out of windows to escape.

"I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn't open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbors," Ali Riza Ferhat of Okcular told NTV television. "We removed six bodies." The Kandilli seismology center said the 6.0-magnitude quake hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) near the village of Basyurt in a remote, sparsely populated area of Elazig province. The region is 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Ankara, the capital.

The US Geological Survey listed the quake at 5.9 magnitude.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kandilli Observatory's director, Mustafa Erdik, urged residents not to enter any damaged homes, warning they could topple from aftershocks that Erdik said could last for days.

More than 100 aftershocks measuring up to 5.5 magnitude shook the region on Monday alone.

In addition to the deaths, 34 people were being treated for injuries, Turkey's crisis center said.

The temblor also knocked down barns, killing many farm animals. A half-dozen dead cows were seen partially buried near one collapsed home. One man, Haci Sekerdag, said he lost eight cows and calves - his main livelihood.

The Turkish Red Crescent set up tents and villagers laid plastic sheeting to shelter them from the cold and dirt.

The government said it rushed ambulance helicopters, prefabricated homes and mobile kitchens into the stricken area.

Erdogan blamed the region's mud-brick buildings for the many deaths and said the government housing agency would build quake-proof homes in the area.

The quake was also felt in the neighboring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir, where residents fled to the streets in panic and stayed outdoors. Schools were closed for two days. In Tunceli province, the quake caused one school's walls to crack, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported, Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.