Antakya - Rescuers pulled a woman alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey on Monday amidst growing anger at the sense there has been an unfair and ineffective response to the historic disaster that has killed tens of thousands of people there and in Syria.

A week after the major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, the toll of dead rose to nearly 34,000. Stories of miraculous rescues like that of the woman today and contacts made of what is believed to be to be a trapped grandmother, mother and 30-day-old baby have captured headlines. However these miracles have done little to relinquish the anger of those who have seen lives slip away Infront of them.

Zafer Mahmut Boncuk’s discovered his 75-year-old mother still alive, but pinned under the wreckage of their apartment building.

For hours, Boncuk frantically searched for someone in the ancient, devastated city of Antakya to help him free her reoprted AP. He was able to talk to her, hold her hand and give her water. Despite his pleas, however, no one came, and she died on Tuesday, the day after the quake.

Boncuk directed his anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially because she seemed so close to rescue but no one came. Her remains were finally removed Sunday, nearly a week after the building collapsed. His father’s body is still in the rubble.

“I gave her water to drink, I cleared her face of rubble. I told her that I would save her. But I failed,” said Boncuk, 60. “The last time we spoke, I asked if I should help her drink some water. She said no, so I rubbed some water on her lips. Ten minutes later, she died.”

He blamed “ignorance and lack of information and care — that’s why my mother died in front of my eyes.”

Many in Turkey express similar frustration that rescue operations have been painfully slow since the Feb. 6 quakes and that valuable time was lost during the narrow window – a week according to some experts - for finding people alive.

In southern Hatay province near the Syrian border, complaints arose against Erdogan’s government due to the delay in delivering assistance to the hardest-hit region for what they suspect are both political and religious reasons.

In the southeastern town of Adiyaman, Elif Busra Ozturk waited for three days outside the wreckage of a building on Saturday where her uncle and aunt were trapped and believed dead, and where the bodies of two of her cousins already had been found, she reported to AP.

At the same complex, Abdullah Tas, 66, said he had been sleeping in a car near the building where his son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren were buried.

In Antakya, bulldozers clawed at a high-rise luxury apartment building that had toppled onto its side. Over 1,000 residents had been in the 12-storey building when the quake struck, according to relatives watching the recovery effort. They said hundreds were still inside but complained the effort to free them had been slow and not serious.

Erdogan said Wednesday that disaster efforts were continuing in all 10 affected provinces and dismissed allegations of no help from state institutions like the military as “lies, fake slander.” The Turkish president though acknowledged to some shortcomings.

The deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939 has killed 29,605 people there. More than 4,300 people were reported dead and 7,600 injured in northwest Syria as of Sunday, said a U.N. agency.

In a central district of one of the worst hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.

Residents and aid workers who came from other cities cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.

Amid concerns about hygiene and the spread of infection in the region, Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at the weekend that rabies and tetanus vaccine had been sent to the quake zone and that mobile pharmacies had started to operate there.

The quake is now the sixth most deadly natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 tremor that killed at least 73,000 in Pakistan.

Turkey said on Sunday about 80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters.
-AP/Reuters