"We've lost hope for the 18 people buried beneath the rubble. Our loss of life is now above 30," Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz told reporters as he toured the village of Selamet, where most of the victims in Rize province died.

Authorities had already reported 14 dead in Rize before giving up hope on the 18 more people missing.

Torrential rains across central and eastern Turkey this week have flooded hundreds of homes, killed livestock and destroyed fields in the largely agricultural provinces.

In Mus province, a six-year-old boy was swept away by floodwaters and drowned last week, Anatolian news agency said.

Eleven people, including six children, died earlier in the week in Kars, Tokat, Corum and Yozgat provinces.

Television pictures from Rize showed washed-out roads, uprooted trees and people digging out cars overturned in mud.

Yilmaz warned that contaminated water posed a threat of epidemic disease.

"We are taking precautionary measures on this danger," he said, adding that some 80 trucks with dredging equipment had been dispatched to the disaster area.

Mudslides and high winds in Rize ruined more than a dozen tea fields a month before the harvest, the mountainous region's economic mainstay, an official at the governor's office said.

"Roads are closed to 95 villages, and several more are without electricity," he said.

Helicopters were delivering food and medicine to some of the isolated villages, he said.