Five children among dead and 30 missing after 6.3-magnitude quake hits 70 miles north-east of Rome.
At least 27 people were killed and 30 left missing after a strong earthquake struck central Italy early this morning, destroying and damaging thousands of buildings and leaving many people homeless.
At least five children were among those who died as the 6.3-magnitude tremor shook the region at 3.32am (2.32am BST), with an epicentre directly below L'Aquila, a city of about 70,000 residents and the historic capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region.
The confirmed death toll is now 27, Italy's Ansa news agency said, citing local hospital officials.
However, with the tremor occurring as people slept and significant damage reported both inside L'Aquila and in surrounding villages, the final toll is likely to rise, which would make the quake the deadliest in Italy for almost 30 years.
"I woke up hearing what sounded like a bomb," Angela Palumbo, 87, said as she took shelter outside in L'Aquila.
"We managed to escape with things falling all around us. Everything was shaking, furniture falling. I don't remember ever seeing anything like this in my life," she told Reuters.
Rubble was littered throughout the 13th-century city and elsewhere in the region, blocking roads and hampering rescue attempts.
Dozens of injured people were waiting outside the main hospital in L'Aquila, which was only partly open after suffering damage, according to local reports.
Another hospital was closed due to fears for its structural safety and those most seriously hurt were being flown by helicopter to other cities.
More than 10,000 buildings were damaged, leaving many homeless, said Agostino Miozzo, an official with Italy's civil protection department.
"This means that the we'll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months," he told Sky Italia. "Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight."
Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, declared the region a disaster area and announced he was cancelling a scheduled trip to Russia.
Firefighters aided by dogs were trying to rescue people from crumbled homes in L'Aquila, including a student dormitory where half a dozen students remained trapped, RAI state TV reported.
"We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down," said one student Luigi Alfonsi, 22.
"I was in bed. It was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me."
Four children were reported killed in one building in L'Aquila. Two people died in one outlying village and five in another.
Television footage from the scene showed residents and rescue workers hauling away debris from collapsed buildings and bloodied residents waiting to be tended to in hospital hallways.
The mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente, told Italian television that two other people were reported dead in the nearby small town of Fossa. He confirmed reports that another eight were missing in another small town.
The Ansa news agency said the dome of a church in L'Aquila collapsed, while the city's cathedral also suffered damage.
The quake was the latest in a series of jolts that struck the area over the last two days.
The last major Italian earthquake was in 2002, when 27 children and one adult died after a school collapsed in Molise, in the south of the country. In November 1980, a severe quake hit an area near Naples, killing 2,570 people.
Should I seek a source of law other than God, when it is He Who has sent down unto you the Book (Qur'an) fully explained? And those whom We have given them the Book know that it has been sent down from the Lord with truth, so be not of those in doubt.
The death toll in Italy's worst earthquake for almost 30 years rose to 207 today, with 15 other people still missing and hopes fading that any more will be uncovered alive in the rubble.
The new casualty figure was delivered by the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on his second visit in two days to the severely damaged medieval city of L'Aquila, the capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region, which was close to the epicentre.
"The rescue efforts will continue for another 48 hours from today until it is certain that there is no one else alive," Berlusconi said. Of about 1,500 people injured, some 100 were in serious condition.
A handful of survivors from the 6.3-magnitude quake in the early hours of yesterday morning were found alive in the wreckage today. Overnight, rescue workers freed two students and found one body buried in the remains of a university accommodation complex. Firefighters today said they had located four more students trapped in a dormitory, but did not say whether they were alive or dead.
Chief firefighter Sergio Basti said rescue crews were evacuating the area around the dormitory because they planned to begin "surgically" removing big chunks of the building in order to reach the four students. Several dozen rescue crews are at the scene of the collapsed building.
L'Aquila, which has about 70,000 residents, suffered severe damage to around two-thirds of its buildings, including several architecturally significant churches. Some villages nearby in the central Italian region were all but flattened. In one village, Onna, rescue workers found 39 of the 300inhabitants had been killed.
Thousands of emergency workers, who worked through the night under floodlights, were continuing to dig for survivors, hampered by strong aftershocks, one of which was of a 4.9 magnitude.
While firefighters said about 100 people had been rescued from rubble since the quake, they expect to find few more survivors now.
One big emergency effort is focused on the L'Aquila student building. The connected four-storey blocks were severely damaged in the quake, with one of the structures leaning at a dangerous angle.
A rescue worker was winched into the middle of the building to look for any survivors.
However, with aftershocks continuing, emergency teams were deciding whether to press on with an increasingly risky operation or pull out so the site could be demolished and made safe.
Some other buildings were already being knocked down today.
Much of L'Aquila resembled a ghost town, with only a few locals risking a return – against the advice of safety workers – to try to save some possessions .
Police said they had already arrested several people for allegedly looting.
Up to 70,000 people are currently unable to live in their homes in the region, although this may be only temporary for some. A total of 17,000 people have lost their homes completely, according to officials.
While several thousand hotel rooms have been requisitioned along the Adriatic coast, many people woke up in tents or their cars after a chilly night in which temperatures dipped to about 6C (43F).
"It has been such a hard and long day. Now that we are sitting here in our car, it's all beginning to sink in," Piera Colucci, a L'Aquila resident, told Reuters as she prepared to spend the night in her vehicle.
Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and cancelled a trip to Russia yesterday. Already facing a national economic crisis, Berlusconi has pledged about £27m in immediate aid for the area and promised that a new town will be built near L'Aquila in the next two years.
The earthquake is the worst to hit Italy since 1980, when 2,735 people were killed in a quake close to Salerno, in the south.
The disaster, which also caused widespread damage to nearby Naples, prompted the introduction of new regulations designed to strengthen buildings in the event of an earthquake.
Many of the buildings destroyed in yesterday's tremor appeared to have been built earlier, either in the 1960s and 70s or – in remote villages – during the middle ages.
There were questions yesterday about how so many buildings could have been destroyed.
Gian Michele Calvi, an earthquake expert at the University of Pavia, said Italy was in the habit of forgetting lessons.
"This country is reminded of the risk of earthquakes only when it finds itself under the rubble," he told Corriere della Sera.
"The fact that two of three operating rooms at L'Aquila hospital are no longer usable is something not worthy of a civilised country."
Should I seek a source of law other than God, when it is He Who has sent down unto you the Book (Qur'an) fully explained? And those whom We have given them the Book know that it has been sent down from the Lord with truth, so be not of those in doubt.
^ Over 200 people dead and you complain about the buildings?!
Blimey.
Last edited by Ali.; 04-07-2009 at 09:57 PM.
Should I seek a source of law other than God, when it is He Who has sent down unto you the Book (Qur'an) fully explained? And those whom We have given them the Book know that it has been sent down from the Lord with truth, so be not of those in doubt.
^ Over 200 people dead and you complain about the buildings?!
Blimey.
People die all the time and they were only around for an average of 40 years, comopared to several centuries if not milennia.
thousands of people died of violent deaths that day.
Italy: Country's muslims raise funds to help quake victims
L'Aquila, 10 April (AKI) - The president of Italy's Union of Islamic Communities said a collection of funds for the victims of the Abruzzo earthquake would take place in mosques across Italy on Friday during prayers. As of Friday, the death toll from the earthquake had reached 289, with thousands injured and 28,000 left homeless.
"Everything that will be collected at mosques in Italy will be given as charity for the victims of the quake in Abruzzo," said Mohammed Nour Dachan, the president of Italy's Union of Islamic Communities (UCOII).
"We feel very close to the joys and pains that affect our country," said Dachan, who is also the imam of the central Italian city of Ancona's mosque.
He made the remarks soon after the end of the open-air mass held in L'Aquila for earthquake victims. After the Christian service, Dachan read the muslim funeral prayer (Salat al-Janaza) for the 11 Muslim victims of the devastating quake.
"We are one big family that lives together the experience of life but that in these days has also lived together the tragedy of death," said Dachan.
"Life and death are all part of this divine design. We find ourselves here, sharing the pain for all our brothers and sisters, the young and the children who are victims of the earthquake that has hurt the heart of Abruzzo and the whole of Italy."
There are around one million Muslims among Italy's population of 60 million.
Around 28,000 people are homeless after thousands of buildings were damaged by the magnitude 6.3 earthquake on Monday and hundreds of aftershocks. The government authorised searches for people who could still be alive under the rubble to continue until Sunday.
The two-hour funeral mass began with a message read on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI, who urged survivors to keep up hope.
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