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Violence erupts while rescuers dig in rubble

May 4 2003
The Sun-Herald


Troops and police fired shots in the air and fought running battles with stone-throwing crowds in the earthquake-struck city of Bingol on Friday.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the local police chief had been sacked after the riots that followed the Thursday quake in the mainly Kurdish region.

The protest erupted as rescue teams dug through the wreckage of a dormitory searching for children trapped under tonnes of rubble at a site that once housed students from around the region.

The tremor, which measured 6.4 on the Richter scale and struck early in the morning, killed more than 100 people, including 38 children, in the mountainous and impoverished region of south-eastern Turkey.

Rescue workers, unable to hear cries for help on Friday sent sniffer dogs to areas in the rubble where they suspected as many as 70 children might still be trapped.

Anger and frustration over the pace of aid and rescue efforts boiled over when more than 1000 people marched on the Bingol governor's office on Friday morning chanting demands that he resign.

Seconds later, police on the steps of the office fired bursts of shots in the air for about two minutes.

Mr Erdogan, who visited Bingol after the quake, said there had been a rapid response to the crisis and blamed the unrest on troublemakers.

"According to intelligence reports, there were serious activities directed at provocation," he told a news conference in the capital, Ankara.

"I call on the people of Bingol to be more calm and sensitive."

He confirmed reports that the Bingol police chief Osman Nuri Ozdemir had been suspended from duties but defended the action of security forces.

"There was no firing on people. It was firing in the air ... It is something that is used from time to time to take control of a situation," he said.


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