in the earthquake zone have been rife since the August 17 quake, which killed at least 15,613 people according to the latest official figures. „Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit…has ordered the inspection board to examine, and if necessary officially investigate, stories that the organ mafia stole organs from corpses in the earthquake zone,“ Ecevit‘s office said in a statement. The devastated northwest of Turkey was strewn with thousands of unclaimed and unburied bodies in the first chaotic days after the earthquake, measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale, struck. The region was swept by rumours of an organ mafia and also by reports that orphaned children were being kidnapped for sale to childless couples in the West. None were ever confirmed.