Two-week-old baby rescued from rubble

Murat Sonmez's mother, wife and four daughters were crushed to death in their home by Turkey's 7.2-magnitude earthquake, leaving him so distraught he found it difficult to speak.

While media coverage has centred on tales of against-the-odds rescues, including a two-week-old baby girl who was pulled alive from the rubble, most stories of the trapped have ended the way that Sonmez knows, with death and unfathomable pain for those left behind.

"I was not at home," Sonmez said, lapsing into silence at times yesterday. "God gave them, God took them away. I can't find anything to say.

"I can't describe my pain," he said as he stood by a levelled four-storey apartment building.

He listed the dead: 32-year-old wife Meral, four daughters: Nisa Nur, two, Meryem, seven, 12-year-old Asli, Meral, 15, and his 65-year-old mother, Hatice. They lived on the second floor, above some businesses. The third and fourth floors were occupied by Sonmez's brother and father, who managed to escape.

He said he and relatives pulled out their dead and buried them, just a few of the victims of the quake that struck eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 461 people.

Elsewhere in Ercis, the town hit hardest by the quake, two teachers and a university student were rescued from ruined buildings yesterday, but searchers said hopes of finding anyone else alive were rapidly fading.

More than 1,350 people were injured.

Gozde Bahar, a 27-year-old English teacher, was pulled out of a ruined building yesterday with injuries as her tearful mother watched anxiously. The Anatolia news agency said her heart stopped at a field hospital but doctors managed to revive her.