Boarding school collapse kills 18

The body of a 13-year-old girl was recovered from the rubble of a collapsed boarding school in central Turkey overnight, bringing the death toll to 18, the Anatolia news agency reported today. The three-storey building outside Taskent town, in the province of Konya, collapsed early yesterday after a gas leak from pipes in the kitchen caused a powerful explosion, leaving at least 27 people injured. The press lashed out today at the authorities over the disaster as it emerged that the building was not properly inspected and the religious association running the boarding house was using it for summer Quran classes for girls without authorisation.

Surviving students said they felt the smell of gas as they woke up early for morning prayers and alerted their teachers. "My granddaughter said the explosion occurred when someone turned the lights on," Dudu Gunes, whose granddaughter survived with serious burns, told Anatolia. The other victims were a teacher and 17 students aged between eight and 16, mostly daughters of poor rural families in the region.

One of the girls described how the explosion sent a wall of flame through the school dormitory. "A strong whistling sound came up from the ground floor. I went into the kitchen with two teachers and one of them said: 'A gas pipe has broken,'" Merve Avci, 13, told the Anatolia news agency. "Five minutes later a strong gas smell took over the dormitories followed by the deafening explosion... We felt the flames rise up around us," said the girl, who escaped with slight cuts.

Search-and rescue teams, helped by specially trained sniffer dogs, clawed through the debris throughout the day, calling off the search late yesterday, and the authorities launched an investigation into the incident. A local engineers' association said their initial examination of the rubble indicated at shoddy construction, which is widespread in Turkey and blamed for heavy death tolls in accidents and earthquakes that frequently rock the country.

*AFP