While rescue efforts have reached the town of Ercis, which bore the brunt of Sunday's quake, little help has trickled out to the villages of Van province.

Some 30 kilometres (20 miles) away from Van city the residents of Guvecli village are complaining of lack of help from the authorities and have taken to using their own tools to search for bodies.

"We recovered our relatives' bodies from the wreckage by our own means, by shovels and digging tools," said Ahmet Yayin.

Some shelter has arrived in the form of 35 tents provided by the Red Crescent, but locals say there are not enough to go round the population of 1,800.

"We are squeezed in the tents. We are a family of 12 but we could only get one tent," said Abdulaziz Yatkin, one of the villagers.

Each tent is designed to house a maximum of five people.

Guvecli villagers are mourning 15 of their own and are grateful that the toll is not higher. When the 7.2-magnitude quake struck, most of the village were out of doors attending a wedding.

After initially refusing any outside help, Turkey has changed its mind after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan conceded that there were "failures" in tackling the problem in the first 24 hours and that authorities needed assistance.

Israel's foreign minister said on Tuesday his government had been asked for help by Turkey despite strained ties between the two countries.

"Turkey has asked us for caravans for the homeless after the earthquake," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP. "We accepted immediately and we will quickly see what we can supply."

Three days after the quake, as the death toll climbs towards 500, homeless survivors are freezing in sub-zero temperatures.

In Guvecli, villagers are bracing for the arrival of snow, forecast for Wednesday.

Many have already spent three nights sleeping outside, crammed into tents or other makeshift shelters, with only small fires for warmth.

They say that food supplies, which have been arriving from the southeastern Tunceli province, some distance away, are also wanting.

Turkey is no stranger to earthquakes. In 1999, two strong quakes in heavily populated and industrialised regions in the northwest left some 20,000 dead.

A powerful earthquake in the town of Caldiran in Van province killed 3,840 people in 1976.