The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy rose
sharply to almost 250 people early on Thursday after rescue teams
worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble of
flattened towns.
The provisional toll jumped to
247 from the 159 dead listed on Wednesday night, national and regional
officials said as a wave of aftershocks rattled a cluster of mountain
communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome.
The
strong 6.2 magnitude quake struck early on Wednesday as people slept,
razing homes and buckling roads. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicentre.
The
sun rose on Thursday on many people who had slept in cars or tents, the
earth continuing to tremble under their feet. Two powerful aftershocks
registered 5.1 and 5.4.
Officials said the death
toll seemed destined to rise further. The toll appeared likely to
surpass that from the last major quake to strike Italy, a temblor that
killed more than 300 people in the central city of L'Aquila in 2009.
At least 368 injured people had been taken to hospital by late on Wednesday, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said.
One
hotel that collapsed in the small town of Amatrice probably had about
70 guests and only seven bodies had been recovered so far, said the
mayor of the one of the worst-hit towns.
Rescuers
working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a 10-year-old
girl, pulling her alive from the rubble where she had lain for some 17
hours in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.
Many
other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys
aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house imploded in the
nearby village of Accumoli.
As rescue workers
carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small
blanket, the children's grandmother blamed God. "He took them all at once," she wailed.
Renzi said the Cabinet would meet on Thursday to decide measures to help the affected communities.
"Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction," he told reporters late on Wednesday.
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Aerial
photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one
of Italy's most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the quake.
Inhabitants of the four worst-hit small towns rise by as much as tenfold
in the summer, and many of those killed or missing were visitors.
The
civil protection agency said it was trying to determine how many people
were staying in the Hotel Roma, Amatrice's best-known accommodation
that mayor Sergio Pirozzi said had collapsed.
Most
of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing
the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighbouring Umbria was
also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings
susceptible to earthquakes.
Italy's earthquake
institute, INGV, said the epicentre was near Accumoli and Amatrice,
which lie between the larger towns of Ascoli Piceno to the northeast and
Rieti to the southwest.
The quake was relatively
shallow at 4 km (2.5 miles) below the earth's surface. INGV reported 150
aftershocks in the 12 hours following the initial quake, the strongest
measuring 5.5.
Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.
The
most deadly temblor since the start of the 20th century came in 1908,
when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000
people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.
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