Teenager saved days after Turkey quake

As toll reaches 550:

TURKEY: Emergency crews found a teenager alive in the rubble of the Turkey quake more than 100 hours after the disaster as the death toll climbed to 550.

Aydin Palak, 18, was pulled out of the wreckage in town of Ercis, which took the full brunt of the quake, media reports said.

Television footage showed emergency workers carrying him to an ambulance over their shoulders on a stretcher.

Palak's rescue came after rescuers saved a 19-year-old earlier on Thursday, although prospects of finding more people alive were fading fast, and some rescue teams have started to leave the region, the Anatolia news agency said.

Late Thursday, the emergency situations management reported that 550 people had died after the quake, some 15 more than reported earlier, and 2,300 people were injured.

A total of 186 people had been pulled alive from the wreckage, officials 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.

And Saudi Arabia pledged to donate $50 million in aid to the quake victims, the kingdom's official SPA news agency reported.

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. AFP