By Agencies

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Hundreds of villagers in eastern Turkey have spent the night sleeping outside after their homes were destroyed in a 6.0-magnitude earthquake.

The quake that struck Elazig province on Monday left 57 people dead, destroyed houses and triggered widespread panic.

Authorities have called off search operations, saying that no one remains under the rubble.

But many villagers in the region are afraid that scores of aftershocks,  the largest of which had a magnitude of 5.5, will destroy homes already damaged by the quake.

Mud-brick houses

Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, blamed the region's mud-brick buildings for the many deaths and said the government housing agency will build quake-proof homes in the area.

The quake was centred on the village of Basyurt, near the town of Kovancilar, and caught many people in their sleep.

Worst-hit was the Kurdish village of Okcular, where at least 15 of the 900 residents were killed and about 30 houses destroyed.

"The village is totally flattened," Hasan Demirdag, Okcular's administrator, told NTV television.

Graves were quickly dug and by the end of Monday afternoon all of the dead were buried following brief prayers at a village mosque that was missing part of its minaret after the quake.

Livestock killed

The quake killed many livestock, the main livelihood for locals in the impoverished region.

The quake was felt in neighbouring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir where residents fled to the streets in panic and spent the night outdoors.

Deadly earthquakes are frequent in Turkey,which is crossed by several active fault-lines.

Two powerful quakes in the heavily populated northwest claimed about 20,000 lives in August and November 1999.

In 2003, an earthquake measuring 6.4 brought down a school dormitory in the neighbouring province of Bingol province, killing 83 children

In 2007, an earthquake measuring 5.7 damaged buildings in Elazig.