Strong earthquake struck central Italy, Mexico's death cult protests shrine destruction

A powerful earthquake struck central Italy early Monday, killing at least six people, causing buildings to collapse and sending thousands of panicked residents into the streets, officials and news reports said.

Officials said the death toll was likely to increase as dawn rose over L'Aquila and firefighters made their way through the debris. Rescue workers were trying to rescue people from collapsed homes, including a student dormitory where a half dozen students remained trapped inside, RAI state TV reported.

Several people were also reported missing in the area of the quake, which was felt in much of central Italy, including Rome.

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Television footage from the scene showed residents and rescue workers already hauling away debris from collapsed buildings and bloodied residents waiting to be tended to in hospital hallways.

"The situation is very serious because the quake affected buildings," said Luca Spoletini, spokesman for the national Civil Protection Department. He declined to give a death toll, saying rescue operations were under way.

Four children died in L'Aquila after their houses collapsed, the ANSA news agency said. Massimo Cialente, mayor of L'Aquila, told Sky TG24 that two other people were reported dead in the nearby small town of Fossa.

Italy's National Institute of Geophysics said the magnitude was 5.8, while the U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.3. The temblor struck about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Rome at about 3:32 a.m. local time (0132 GMT, 9:32 p.m. EDT), officials said. The Civil Protection Department said the epicenter was near the city of L'Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo region.

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About 200 worshippers marched Sunday to protest the government's destruction of "Death Saint" shrines, saying Mexico's fight against drug cartels has veered into religious persecution.

At shrines, chapels and small churches across the country, tens of thousands of people worship the Death Saint, which is often depicted as a robe-covered skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper.

"We are believers, not criminals!" the protesters chanted as they marched from a gritty Mexico City neighborhood to the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown.

It is popular with drug traffickers, and soldiers often find shrines to the saint during raids on cartel safe houses. But in crime-ridden neighborhoods, people of all walks of life believe the "Santa Muerte" protects against violent or untimely deaths. Devotees often use elements of Catholic rites, leaving offerings of candles or praying to the folk saint for protection.

Mexican law enforcement won't say it is targeting the "Santa Muerte." But last month, army troops accompanied workers who used back hoes to topple and crush more 30 shrines on a roadway in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. Many were elaborate, one-story, marble-clad constructions with electric lighting and statues of the skeletal Death Saint.

The sect's archbishop, David Romo, denounced the destruction as religious persecution and demanded a meeting with President Felipe Calderon.

Protesters carried statues and pushed makeshift shrines to the saint. Some brought their children, and one marcher carried a white puppy.

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