ANKARA, Jan 21 (Reuters) - A small earthquake was felt in eastern Turkey on Sunday and caused slight damage to houses and shops, the state Anatolian news agency reported on Sunday.

Halil Ibrahim Akpinar, the governor of Agri near the border with Iran, said no one had been injured in the quake, which had a magnitude of 5.0 according to Turkey's earthquake monitoring centre.

Turkey, which lies on a major fault line, has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past and in August 1999 nearly 18,000 people were killed in a quake in northwestern Turkey.

Scientists predict a major earthquake in Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, sometime in the next few decades.

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