Turkey says quake death toll increases to 570

Death Toll in Turkish Quake Reaches 570  The death toll following Sunday\'s powerful earthquake that struck the province of Van in eastern Turkey stands at 570 as of Friday morning, the Prime Ministry\'s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) said.
AFAD also said 2,250 people were injured in the 7.2-magnitude quake, adding that 187 people had been rescued from collapsed buildings since the quake.
Search and rescue teams pulled a teenager alive from the debris 108 hours after Sunday\'s massive earthquake, semi-official Anatolia news agency reported Friday.
Relief teams pulled the 13-year-old Serhat Tokay alive from the rubble of an apartment building in Van\'s Ercis town early Friday, according to the report. Tokay was then taken under treatment in a field hospital.
Turkey\'s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged Wednesday at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) that his government had exhibited some failures in response to the earthquake on the first day, but he also criticized the media for accusing the government of being late in reaching out to quake victims.
\"I admit that we failed in the beginning within the first 24 hours. But this is normal. This happens all around the world,\" Erdogan said, adding that the situation now is almost completely under control.
The 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Sunday afternoon led to the collapse of about 80 buildings in Ercis, a town of 75,000 people close to the Iranian border. The region is among Turkey\'s most earthquake-prone zones.
Snow blanketed eastern Turkey Thursday, complicating rescue efforts, while emergency crews managed to save a teenager after more than 100 hours of the devastating quake of 7.2 magnitude.
Aydin Palak, 18, was pulled out from rubble in town of Ercis, which took the full brunt of the earthquake, media reports said.
Television footage showed emergency workers carrying him to an ambulance over their shoulders on a stretcher.
Palak\'s rescue came after emergency workers pulled a 19-year-old from the rubble earlier on Thursday, although prospects of finding more people alive were fading fast, as the death toll passed 500.
Some of the rescue teams have started to leave the region, Anatolia news agency said.
After the government acknowledged failings in the initial rescue efforts, help from abroad was beginning to arrive, including an aid plane from Israel and Armenia.
But in a sign of the disillusionment with the help they had received so far, some families who had been staying in tents began returning to their homes despite warnings that they were still at risk of collapse from aftershocks.
Many families have been forced to sleep in overcrowded tents or even out in the open around fires as the temperatures dropped to below freezing, while some locals complained that aid was not being distributed fairly.
A tent city has arisen around the government-built apartment blocks near Ercis, although the buildings survived the earthquake with minor damage.
Others in Ercis town centre are still seeking shelter.
A 41-year-old taxi driver, Mujdat Yilmaz, whose house collapsed, said he had not been able to get hold of a tent since Sunday.
\"I\'ve been waiting in the queue at several spots since the quake occured but I couldn\'t get any,\" he said, while waiting in the line in Ercis.
Red Cresecent head Ahmet Lutfi Aker told NTV news channel that 27,500 tents had been brought in to Van.
In its latest damage assessment bulletin, the prime minister\'s emergency unit said that 534 people were now known to have died after the 7.2 magnitude quake struck. A further 2,300 had been injured in the disaster, it added.
A total of 185 people had been pulled alive from the wreckage, officials said.
A separate 5.4 magnitude quake on Thursday morning struck the southeastern town of Yuksekova, near the Iraqi border, over 200 kilometres (120 miles) southeast of Van, although no damage was reported and experts said it involved a different faultline.
With hopes in Van of finding anyone else alive receding, the focus was shifting to how to help survivors.
The arrival of an Israeli plane carrying five pre-fabricated homes to provide shelter was a powerful symbol of the change of heart by the government which had initially refused help from abroad.
Relations between Turkey and Israel have been toxic in recent months in the wake of a deadly raid by Israeli commandos last year on an aid vessel bound for the Gaza Strip.
\"Three more planes loaded with aid supplies will come to Turkey within two days,\" Nizar Amer, an official from the Israeli embassy in Ankara, told Anatolia.
Foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal on Thursday said diplomatic relations with Israel and humanitarian aid were separate issues, Anatolia reported.
Unal said 14 countries as well as United Nations bodies would send help to Turkey, including Britain, France, Russia, Jordan and Belgium.
A 150-person rescue team from Azerbaijan was already in the quake zone, the first foreign team to arrive.
An Armenian plane carrying 40 tonnes of emergency supplies including tents, sleeping bags and blankets was set to take off late Thursday, the emergency situations ministry in Yerevan said.
Relations between Yerevan and Ankara have suffered for years over Turkey\'s refusal to recognise the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians as genocide.
After widespread overnight snowfall in the region, forecasters said the weather pattern would remain the same until the end of the week.
Huseyin Celik, deputy head of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that the earthquake had affected 700,000 people in the region and up to 115,000 tents were needed.
The prosecutor\'s office in Ercis meanwhile began an investigation into the construction companies that put up collapsed buildings, Anatolia said.
In Van province 3,713 buildings, home to 5,250 families, had been destroyed, the prime minister\'s emergency unit said.
There have been frequent complaints among residents of the mainly Kurdish region that the Ankara government would have acted faster if disaster had struck elsewhere.
\"We did not discriminate between Turks, Kurds or Zaza people.... We said that they are all our people,\" Erdogan said on Wednesday as he defended his government\'s handling of the aid operation.