Forty-six people were injured Monday in eastern Turkey when an earthquake measuring 5.7 on the open-ended Richter scale jolted the Kurdish-populated mountainous region, the government's emergency agency said.

The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 10:41 am (0741 GMT), was in the town of Karliova in the province of Bingol, already hit by a series of tremors measuring up to 5.9 on the Richter scale in March, the Istanbul-based Kandilli observatory said.

The tremor destroyed a number of buildings that were already damaged in the earthquakes in March, he said.

The local authorities closed schools in the province for two days and asked the Turkish Red Crescent to send tents to the town to accommodate people whose homes were damaged or those who may be too frightened to stay indoors.

Humanitarian relief as well as search and rescue teams were dispatched to the region -- apparently as a precautionary measure after seismologists warned that the quake might be followed by potentially damaging aftershocks.

In 2003, a quake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale left 176 dead in Bingol province, nearly half of them children asleep at a boarding school when the tremor struck.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which is crossed by several seismological fault lines.

Some 20,000 people died in two massive tremors in the country's heavily industrialized northwest in August and November 1999.

PHOTO CAPTION

An earthquake is recorded on a seismograph. (AFP)