Earthquake rocks Spanish town, kills six

Some reports said the magnitude 5.3 earthquake sent tremors through the region of Murcia and had affected a nursing home and the tower of a church.
"Unfortunately, we can confirm ... deaths due to cave-ins and falling debris," the mayor of Lorca, Francisco Jodar, told radio station Ser. "We're trying to find out if there are people inside the collapsed houses," he said.
A Murcia government spokesman said on the radio that six people had been killed.
"We were just sat here and everything began to move, pictures fell from the wall, the TV fell and (the quake) went on for ages. We looked out of the window and there were a lot of people running, an ambulance and the police," one woman told national radio.
The earthquake struck at 6.47 pm, according to Spain's National Geographical Institute data. The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter was one kilometer below the ground.
Lorca, which has a population of about 90,000 people, dates back to the Bronze Age and probably gained its name from the Romans. The old part of the town is made up of a network of narrow alleyways.
The town is built in the shadow of a fortress and its many architectural features include a Roman military column, the Church of San Francisco and medieval walls and gates of San Antonio.
At one point in its history, Lorca was a dangerous border town caught between the Kingdom of Castile and the Moorish Kingdom of Granada. Its Easter Fiesta draws throngs of Spaniards and foreign tourists.