A strong earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey on Thursday, demolishing buildings including a boarding school dormitory, trapping scores under rubble and raising fears of up to 150 killed. The tremor of magnitude 6.4 was centred near the city of Bingol early on Thursday, at 0337 local time (0037GMT). At least 13 bodies are reported to have been pulled from the rubble, while the mayor of Bingol says 38 are confirmed dead, but the toll appears set to rise. Housing Minister Zeki Ergezen is reported to have told the private station NTV that the death toll was 150, with 300 injured. It is not known where he got those figures. Rescue efforts are focusing on a boarding school which collapsed, trapping more than 100 children inside, Mr Ergezen told NTV. The building, which was four stories high, was reduced to rubble. Reports from the region say there were 230 children enrolled at the school. It is not known how many were inside when the earthquake hit. It said cries of children could be heard from beneath the shattered masonry. A Reuters reporter on the scene said he could see at least 10 buildings flattened by the force of the tremor in the center of town. The minaret of one mosque had toppled. The injured overflowed into the sunny hospital garden where some wept quietly on makeshift beds and children sucked on cartons of fruit juice handed out by hospital staff. In the center of Bingol, women wailed and cried as local soldiers and civilians pounded with pickaxes and mechanized diggers at the rubble of apartment blocks to rescue people trapped beneath. Soldiers and rescue workers struggled to hold back anxious parents from the rubble where they were working. Aftershocks continued to ripple underfoot. Military vehicles toured the city warning people not to approach damaged buildings. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan gathered senior ministers for a crisis meeting in Ankara. A seismologist in Istanbul said between 50 and 60 children had already been rescued. Electricity and phone service to the region has been disrupted by the quake, limiting the flow of information from the affected area. Correspondents say the timing of the quake - when people were at home asleep - could contribute to the death toll. One rescuer on the scene said "everything" in the area was destroyed: "There are no buildings left standing." Thursday's quake lasted 17 seconds, according to the head of Istanbul's Kandilli seismology centre. "We woke at exactly half past with everything in the house shaking, from the pictures to the windows in their frames," said one resident of the city of Diyarbakir, some 70 miles south of the epicenter in Bingol. Turkey lies on the North Anatolian fault, and earthquakes are common and the country is used to mounting earthquake rescue operations quickly, but that it will take extra effort to get aid to the remote and sparsely populated region where Thursday's quake struck. Initial rescue efforts will consist mostly of local people clawing desperately at the rubble until equipment arrives, most likely from the capital Ankara. Bingol province is a region of mountains and upland forests mainly populated by Kurds. Its population was put at around 254,000 in the most recent census of 2000. Two earthquakes in August 1999 killed more than 17,000 people in the north-west of the country. An earthquake in Bingol in 1971 killed about 900 people. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Men search through the debris of houses destroyed in an earthquake in the town of Celtiksuyu, near the southeastern Turkish town of Bingol May 1, 2003. The earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey on Thursday, demolishing buildings including a boarding school dormitory, trapping scores under rubble and raising fears that up to 150 people had been killed. (Anatolian/Reuters)