Violent quakes rock Turkey: 30 injured

Fear gripped many people who refused to enter buildings, preferring to wait in parks in case of aftershocks, witnesses told AFP.

Anatolia news agency said about 30 people were hospitalized, mostly for treatment of fractures, after they jumped off balconies or windows. One man who had hurled himself off the fifth floor of a building was in a critical condition, it said.

The first quake ocurred beneath the Aegean Sea at 8:45 am (0545 GMT).

Measured at 5.7 points on the Richter scale by the Kandilli observatory and 6.0 by the Athens observatory, it was felt in several Turkish towns on the Aegean coast and on the nearby Greek islands of Chios and Samos.

A second earthquake, measuring 5.9, struck at 12:47 p.m. (0947 GMT) with its epicentre beneath the Aegean Sea off the town of Seferihisar, which lies 40 kilometres (about 25 miles) southwest of Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city, a spokeswoman for Kandilli observatory told AFP.