<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Flash floods killed at least 14 people living in tents and container housing across Turkey's quake-hit region on Wednesday, piling more pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of crunch elections.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Several more people were swept away by the rushing water, which turned streets into muddy rivers in areas hit by last month's 7.8-magnitude quake, officials said.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div>Hundreds of thousands of Turkish quake survivors have been moved into tents and container homes across the disaster region, which covers 11 provinces across Turkey's southeast.</div><div><br></div><div>Torrential rains hit the area on Tuesday and the weather service expects them to last until late Wednesday.</div><div><br></div><div>Turkish officials said the floods killed 12 people in Sanliurfa, about 30 miles (50 kilometres) north of the Syrian border.</div><div><br></div><div>Two people, including a one-year-old, also died in nearby Adiyaman, where five remain unaccounted for.</div><div><br></div><div>Images showed the waters sweeping away cars and flooding temporary housing set up for earthquake victims.</div><div><br></div><div>In one viral video, a man dressed in a beige suit and tie reaches out for help while floating down a surging stream alongside a piece of furniture. His fate remains unknown.</div><div>Other images showed people pulling victims out of the water with branches and rope.</div><div><br></div><div>The Sanliurfa governor's office said the flooding also reached the ground floor of one of the region's main hospitals.</div><div><br></div><div>- Pressure on Erdogan -</div><div><br></div><div>Facing a difficult re-election on May 14, Erdogan is confronting a furious public backlash over his government's stuttering response to the biggest natural disaster of his two-decade rule.</div><div><br></div><div>Erdogan has issued several public apologies while also stressing that no nation could have dealt quickly with a disaster of such scale.</div><div><br></div><div>Erdogan has spent the past few weeks touring the region, meeting survivors and promising to rebuild the entire area within a year.</div><div><br></div><div>"By the end of next year, we will build 319,000 houses," Erdogan told his ruling party members on Wednesday in a parliamentary address.</div><div><br></div><div>"Beyond the search and rescue, emergency aid and temporary shelter we have provided so far, we have a promise to our nation to restore the cities destroyed in the earthquake within a year," he said.</div><div><br></div><div>Erdogan dispatched his interior minister to the flooded region to oversee the government's response.</div><div><br></div><div>"Currently, we have 10 teams composed of 163 people doing search and rescue work across a 25-kilometre stretch," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters, reports AFP </div><div><br></div><div>"We also have divers. But the weather conditions are not allowing us to do much," he added.</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>