Investigations have been launched against more than 600 people in relation to buildings that collapsed in Turkey’s catastrophic earthquake earlier this month, a government official said.

Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said 184 of the 612 suspects have been jailed pending trial.

Those in custody include construction contractors and building owners or managers, he said in televised comments from a co-ordination centre in Diyarbakir,south-east Turkey, on Saturday.

“The detection of evidence in the buildings continues as a basis for criminal investigation,” Mr Bozdag added.

The aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude disaster on February 6, which led to nearly 48,000 deaths in southern Turkey and northern Syria, has seen Turks question the structural integrity of many of the 173,000 buildings that collapsed or were seriously damaged.

Experts have said many toppled structures were built with inferior materials and methods and often did not comply with government standards.

Opposition parties have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration of failing to enforce building regulations.

The mayor of a town close to the earthquake’s epicentre was detained as part of an investigation into collapsed buildings, the Cumhuriyet newspaper and other outlets reported on Saturday.

Okkes Kavak, who heads the district of Nurdagi in Gaziantep province and is a member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, is accused of failing to ensure construction inspections were carried out.

AFAD, Turkey’s disaster management agency, said 9,470 aftershocks have hit the region affected by the earthquake.

“This will continue for a long time… we expect these aftershocks to last for at least two years,” general manager Orhan Tatar said at a media briefing in Ankara.

He said a 5.3-magnitude quake which hit Bor, a town around 150 miles west of the February 6 epicentre, is considered “independent” of earlier temblors.