Turkey buries quake victims

Mourners form a human corridor to carry the coffins of six victims

EBER, Turkey -- The first victims of Turkey's latest fatal earthquake have been buried as recriminations begin against the government's aid programme.

More than 200 mourners gathered outside a damaged mosque for the funeral of six victims in the town of Sultandagi on Monday.

Mourners passed the six coffins from shoulder to shoulder from the mosque to waiting trucks and tractors which took them to a cemetery.

Municipal vehicles with loudspeakers drove through the small town of Cay announcing the names of the dead, and the time and place of their funerals.

At least 43 people are feared to have died when an earthquake registering 6.0 on the Richter scale shook the western province of Afyon in central Turkey on Sunday.

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The government said it has been better prepared to deal with the latest tragedy to have hit Turkey, following the 1999 earthquake in which 18,000 people died.

But some survivors complained that supplies were not getting through after having spent Sunday night outside in freezing conditions.

Improved transport is in existence, authorities rushed in mobile soup kitchens, and open-air first aid posts have been set up to treat the injured, the government said.

Some aid is reaching affected areas, including 20,000 blankets, 7,000 tents and more than 3,000 gas heaters.

Greece and Germany have both offered to send aid, but Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who briefly visited the damaged area, said there was no need for foreign aid at the moment.

"The state is rushing to the aid of citizens who are suffering," Ecevit said on Monday after a Cabinet meeting to discuss the quake.

In Eber village, where 15 people died, only a handful of prefabricated houses or tents were available on Sunday.

The earthquake, which hit a less developed region than the 1999 quakes, injured more than 300 people and destroyed or damaged about 600 homes, mainly built of sun-dried bricks.

Rescue services have called off the search for survivors of the earthquake, which was felt in cities up to 200 miles north and west of the epicenter.