Flash floods kill at least 14 in Turkish quake zone

Flash floods killed at least 14 people living in tents and container homes across an earthquake-hit Turkish region on Wednesday, increasing pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of a snap election.

Several other people were swept away by rushing water that turned streets into rivers of mud in areas hit by the previous 7.8-magnitude earthquake, officials said.

More than 48,000 people died in Turkey and nearly 6,000 in Syria in the February 6 disaster, the region's deadliest in modern times. Hundreds of thousands of people who survived the earthquake in Turkey have been moved into tents and container houses throughout the disaster area, which covers 11 provinces in southeastern Turkey. Torrential rains hit the area Tuesday and the weather service expects them to last through Wednesday.

Turkish officials said flooding killed 12 people in Sanliurfa, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of the Syrian border. Two people, including a one-year-old, also died in nearby Adiyaman, where five are missing. Images showed water sweeping away cars and flooding temporary housing set up for earthquake victims.

The Sanliurfa governor's office said flooding also affected the ground floor of one of the region's main hospitals. Facing a difficult re-election on May 14, Erdogan faces a furious public backlash over his government's stuttering response to the biggest natural disaster of his two decades in power.

Erdogan issued several public apologies while stressing that no nation could quickly deal with a disaster of this magnitude. "We will build 319,000 houses by the end of next year," Erdogan told members of his ruling party in a parliamentary speech on Wednesday.

Erdogan sent his interior minister to the flooded region to oversee the government's response. "We currently have 10 teams of 163 people carrying out search and rescue work on a 25-kilometer stretch," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters. “We also have divers. But the weather conditions do not allow us to do much,” he said.