At least three people have been lightly injured and a number of buildings damaged after an earthquake rocked southern Spain.

The epicentre of the magnitude 4.8 tremor on Tuesday morning was about 10km (six miles) south of the historic city of Granada, the country's National Geographic Institute (IGN) said.

Many local residents were seen rushing out of their homes into the streets, fearing strong aftershocks. A number of vehicles were damaged by falling debris. Some museums, administrative buildings and sports centres have been forced to close.

The IGN said it was the latest in a series of very shallow tremors in the area that started last Friday and were widely felt.

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The tremor struck at 10:37 local time (08:37 GMT) near the town of Alhendín, the IGN said. It was recorded at the depth of under 10km.

Alfonso Malpica said he felt his ground floor flat in Granada shaking, telling El País newspaper that the quake was "stronger than the ones that happen from time to time, the ones we're used to".

"Everything came crashing down. It was terrifying," Cristina Ruiz Lopez, a lab worker who was at a supermarket in Granada, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Granada's famous Alhambra palace - a Unesco World Heritage Site of medieval Islamic architecture - "will remain closed this afternoon", the site administrators said.

The palace is visited every year by millions of tourists from around the world.

Meanwhile, Granada's metro network said it was reducing the speed of its trains to 30km/h (19mph) for "safety reasons" and warned that this may cause delays.

 

SOURCE/AUTHOR : BBC NEWS/Jaroslav Lukiv