Outbreak of epidemics feared

Officials worried over outbreak of diseases like cholera and dysentery sprayed disinfectant and distributed water purification tablets in hard-hit areas.

In Adapazari province alone, home to 3,60,000 people, some 70,000 homes have been demolished or rendered uninhabitable by Tuesday’s quake, Governor Yener Rakicioglu said.

With most of the population sleeping on the streets, authorities have begun setting up tent cities, he said. In the naval port town of Golcuk on the sea of Marmara, food andmedical equipment were arriving and officials were setting up portable toilets in the parts of the city where they can be connected to sewage lines.

Officials appealed to agencies and concerned citizens not to send fresh fruits or vegetables because there was no clean water to wash them.

By early Saturday morning, the official death toll had reached 10,204 with more than 34,000 injured. Elsewhere, workers plowed under corn fields for mass graves.

The scale of the disaster made it impossible to identify all the victims. So bodies were photographed and fingerprints recorded before being wrapped in a kefen, the traditional white Muslim burial cloth, and buried so that relatives could possibly identify them later.

Meanwhile at least 42 countries have sent money or aid to Turkey in the wake of its devastating earthquake, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHO) said here.

Around 30 humanitarian organisations, National Red Cross Societies, churches and various religiouscommunities have also contributed to relief efforts alongside the International Committee for the Red Cross and UN humanitarian agencies.