Desperate survivors of Turkey’s devastating earthquake looted truckloads of aid supplies as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged failures yesterday in the relief effort.

As night-time temperatures dropped to below zero and snow was forecast to fall overnight, authorities were in a race against time to provide some form of shelter for the thousands of people who faced another night out in the open.

The last official death toll was 471 and more than 1,600 injured, but the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has said that “hundreds, possibly thousands” of people are still trapped under the rubble in eastern Van province.

While a 27-year-old teacher was plucked to safety in the early morning, hopes of finding more people alive were fading fast.

Excavators in Van began clearing rubble yesterday evening as rescue workers estimated that no survivors were left beneath the debris.

With complaints about the pace of the relief effort mounting, the government finally agreed to accept help from abroad although Mr Erdogan insisted that things were now coming under control after a tricky beginning.

“We accept that there were some failures within the first 24 hours,” the Prime Minister said in remarks on Turkish television, in particular acknowledging problems with the distribution of tents.

However he also said it was understandable that there would be teething problems given the scale of the disaster and that he had sent a number of ministers to oversee the relief efforts.

There have been frequent complaints among residents of the mainly Kurdish region that the Ankara government would have acted faster if disaster had struck elsewhere. “We did not discriminate between Turks, Kurds or Zaza people... We said that they are all our people,” Mr Erdogan said.

But the revelation from the Turkish Red Crescent that 17 aid trucks had been raided highlighted the sense of despair among survivors.

Ahmet Lutfi Aker, the national head of the organisation, said that the trucks had been looted both in the provincial capital Van and in Ercis, the town which bore the full brunt of the quake.

Locals in Ercis recounted seeing the driver of one of the trucks assaulted before his attackers made off with food and blankets.

After the rescue of a 16-day-old baby, her mother and grandmother sparked scenes of joy on Tuesday, emergency teams yesterday pulled 27-year-old Gozde Bahar from the debris of her home.