ANKARA (AFP) - Three violent earthquakes shook western Turkey yesterday, cracking walls, collapsing chimneys and sending 30 people to hospital, including a man who reportedly threw himself from the fifth floor of a building in panic.

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

The 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 critical condition, it said.

The first quake occurred beneath the Aegean Sea at 8.45 a.m. (local time).

Measured at 5.7 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 Richter, struck at 12.47 p.m. (local time) with its epicenter beneath the Aegean Sea off the town of Seferihisar, which lies 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) southwest of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, a spokeswoman for Kandilli observatory told AFP.

A third trembler, with an intensity of 5.6 Richter, followed eight minutes later, the Kandilli observatory said.

Officials said the quakes did not cause extensive structural damage. However, schools were closed for the rest of the day and today in Izmir and the surrounding Izmir province.

In the coastal resort of Urla, several house chimneys collapsed and cracks opened in the walls of buildings after the first trembler, said the town mayor, Selcuk Karaosmanoglu.

Turkey’s top seismologist warned more earthquakes in a region which is crossed by several seismological faultlines.