Spain mourns quake victims

LORCA, Spain — Sobbing relatives joined a funeral mass in the quake-wrecked Spanish city Lorca on Friday for four of the nine victims who perished in a hail of tumbling masonry and bricks.Crown Prince Felipe and his wife Letizia held hands, hugged and spoke with the bereaved, many in tears, as about 2,000 people gathered for the service in an open-sided pavilion in the southeastern city.Four wood coffins were lined up in front of the congregation during the mass before being taken for burial in flower-draped hearses. Families of the other victims preferred to hold private services.Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero attended the mass as two days of national mourning began for all five male and four female victims, including a 14-year-old boy and two pregnant women. Attendants comforted distressed mourners, guiding some out of the emotion-laden service presided over by the bishop of Cartagena, Jose Manuel Lorca Planes. "We have been very badly affected," said Manuel Tudela, 58, who was there to mourn especially for a friend, a neighbour and a female cousin, all three killed in the disaster."This is something that we never expected. We were not prepared for this. But the pain of the victims is much worse than the damage," Tudela said.Marisol Lozano, 54, said she knew the teenage boy who was killed and his family."In towns like this, everybody knows everybody. We still can't believe such a disaster happened. It's like we were hit by a bomb. But Lorca is very strong," she said.The 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:47 pm (1647 GMT) on Wednesday at a depth of just 10 kilometres (six miles), coming nearly two hours after a smaller 4.4-magnitude quake.Ripping open walls, toppling roofs and crushing cars under stones, the tremor also injured another 130 people, according to emergency services, and forced thousands from their homes.According to the Red Cross, 15,000 of the historic city's 93,000 inhabitants were evacuated from their homes.Thousands spent their second night away from their residences. But

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