A week after a powerful earthquake in south-east Turkey, hordes of survivors roamed streets past devastated homes, some complaining their families still had no tents with winter closing in. On Saturday, the official death toll crept up to 582. The town of Ercis was worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude quake, with 455 people killed.
The last person dug out of the rubble alive was a 13-year-old boy in the early hours of Friday. He was the 188th person to be rescued. Hopes of finding more were fading. Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told a news conference in Van on Saturday that search and rescue operations at the last four sites in Ercis would be halted in the evening.
Under fire for a slow response in the early days of the disaster, state authorities have declared tents will only be given to families once their home has been deemed uninhabitable, but people are too scared to go back to crack walls with multiple aftershocks rattling the region.
"This is a city of winter," said Giyasettin Calis, 41, who sheltered his family of 14 under a makeshift tent made from nylon and canvas. "The government won't give us tents so we had to make our own tents ... We are all waiting for the government to come and see our homes for themselves."
Overseeing the relief efforts, Atalay said 35,000 tents had been handed out so far, and there was no shortage. But people have complained distribution was chaotic, tents were looted, and some were sold by profiteers on the black market.
"From now on, we are determining the need for tents according to our nightly visits and not according to citizens demands," Atalay said. Relief agencies have established tent cities on the edge of a town that was once home to nearly 100,000.
Atalay earlier said the emergency needs for all the affected - at least in the main urban areas - would be met by Saturday night, though supplying outlying villages would take longer. For people still waiting for the state to help they seemed empty words, after spending a sixth bitterly cold night under whatever shelter they had made for themselves, and accusations of mismanagement and unfairness of handing out tents were rife.
"They give tents to supporters of the government party. Village leaders hand out tents to their friends and relatives. Public servants get the best tents," 60-year-old Kahraman Kaya told Reuters, tramping the streets of Ercis with other grim-faced, red-eyed and unshaven men.
The region is predominantly Kurdish, and the government is trying to build bridges with the ethnic minority while fighting a long-running separatist insurgency by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, making it particularly sensitive to any accusations of neglect. Parades and receptions on Saturday for Republic Day, celebrating the formation of the modern Turkish state, were cancelled.
On Saturday, a female suicide bomber killed at least two people and wounded a dozen more in an attack on a tea house close to the offices of the ruling AK Party in Bingol, another town in the mainly Kurdish area. No official figures were available for the number of people made homeless by the quake. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put the number of "affected people" at 50,000.