Tag Archives: Italy

Almost 500 migrants reach Italy, more deaths reported at sea

Migrants wait to disembark from Italian Coast Guard patrol vessel Diciotti in the Sicilian harbour of Catania, Italy,

CATANIA, Italy (Reuters) – Almost 500 migrants arrived at the port of Catania on Wednesday after being rescued earlier this week near the coast of Libya, with the influx of refugees heading to Europe showing no signs of slowing.

Hundreds of migrants, mostly men from sub-Saharan Africa, huddled under gray blankets on the deck of the Italian coast guard vessel Diciotti as they started to disembark in pouring rain.

A second ship, the Aquarius, operated by the non-governmental group SOS Mediterranee, was due to dock at an Italian port in the next two days carrying some 120 migrants and the bodies of nine people who died trying to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing.

Mathilde Auvillain, a spokeswoman for SOS Mediterranee aboard the Aquarius, said that among the migrants were a group of 23 people who were plucked from the sea on Tuesday by an oil tanker after their rubber boat started to sink.

Four bodies were recovered from the scene, but many more were believed to have drowned, with survivors saying that 122 people had been on the boat when it left Libya.

Some 167,000 migrants have reached Italy by boat so far this year, exceeding the total for all of 2015 which stood at 154,000. The death toll in the Mediterranean has surged this year to more than 4,270 compared to 3,777 in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration.

While last year departures dropped off from October as the weather conditions worsened, this year the decline has been less pronounced, Interior Ministry data show.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Earthquake hits already battered central Italy, no casualties

Firefighters inspecting Norcia, Italy after earthquakes

ROME (Reuters) – A strong earthquake hit the same area of central Italy on Thursday that has already been battered by a spate of recent tremors, but there were no reports of casualties or further serious damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) initially measured the quake at 5.0 but later revised it to 4.8. Its epicenter was in the Marche region, one of three areas hit repeatedly since August.

Nearly 10 hours after the latest quake, there were no reports of casualties, injuries or serious damage to buildings already weakened by previous tremors.

Earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 6.1 hit the area on Oct. 26, followed by a 6.6 magnitude quake on Sunday, the biggest tremor to strike Italy for 36 years.

The recent quakes have reshaped more than 600 square km (230 square miles) of land, lowering areas around the epicenter by up to 70 cm (28 inches), according to data released by Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV)..

Central Italy was hit by an initial earthquake on Aug. 24 that killed 300 people, most of them in the town of Amatrice. Since then, some 21,600 aftershocks have battered the region, the INGV said, driving most residents from their homes.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella in Rome and Sandra Maler in Washington; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

New earthquake rocks Italy, buildings collapse but no deaths reported

Coffins are seen in the collapsed cemetery of the village of Campi near Norcia, following an earthquake in central Italy,

By Isla Binnie

NORCIA, Italy (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake struck Italy on Sunday in the same central regions that have been rocked by repeated tremors over the past two months, with more homes and churches brought down but no deaths reported.

The quake, which measured 6.6 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was bigger than one on Aug. 24 that killed almost 300 people. Many people have fled the area since then, helping to avoid a new devastating death toll.

With thousands already made homeless, a leading seismologist warned that the earthquakes could go on for weeks in a domino effect along the central Apennine fault system.

The latest quake was felt across much of Italy, striking at 7.40 a.m. (0640 GMT), its epicenter close to the historic Umbrian walled town of Norcia, some 100 km (60 miles) from the university city of Perugia.

Panicked Norcia residents rushed into the streets and the town’s ancient Basilica of St. Benedict collapsed, leaving just the facade standing. Nuns, monks and locals sank to their knees in the main square in silent prayer before the shattered church.

“This is a tragedy. It is a coup de grace. The basilica is devastated,” Bishop Renato Boccardo of Norcia told Reuters.

“Everyone has been suspended in a never-ending state of fear and stress. They are at their wits’ end,” said Boccardo, referring to the thousands of tremors that have rattled the area since August, including two serious quakes on Wednesday.

Italy’s Civil Protection unit, which coordinates disaster relief, said numerous houses were destroyed on Sunday in the regions of Umbria and Marche, but either they were deserted at the time or most of the residents managed to escape in time.

Civil Protection chief Fabrizio Curcio said no deaths had been reported and around 20 people were injured, none of them critically. He said it was too early to say how many more people had lost their homes.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised a massive reconstruction effort regardless of cost and took advantage of the disaster to resume his frequent criticism of the European Union’s public finance rules.

“We will rebuild everything, the houses, the churches and the businesses,” he told reporters. “Everything that needs to be done to rebuild these areas will be done.”

He said he would have “no regard for technocratic rules” and would consider all money spent to make Italy’s schools and hospitals earthquake-proof to be outside EU limits on budget deficits.

Local authorities said towns and villages already battered by August’s 6.2 quake had suffered further significant damage.

“This morning’s quake has hit the few things that were left standing. We will have to start from scratch,” Michele Franchi, the deputy mayor of Arquata del Tronto, told Rai television.

Experts said Sunday’s quake was the strongest here since a 6.9 quake in Italy’s south in 1980 that killed 2,735 people.

Firefighters take care of a woman following an earthquake in Norcia, Italy,

Firefighters take care of a woman following an earthquake in Norcia, Italy, October 30, 2016. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

ARTISTIC LOSS

The destruction of the Norcia basilica was the single most significant loss of Italy’s artistic heritage in an earthquake since a tremor in 1997 caused the collapse of the ceiling of the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, which is 80 km to the north.

The frescoed basilica, which is the spiritual, historic and tourist heart of Norcia, was built over the site of the home where the founder of the Benedictine order and his Sister St. Scolastica were born in 480.

The basilica and monastery complex dates to the 13th century, although shrines to St. Benedict and his sister had been built there since the 8th century.

Benedict founded the Benedictine order in Subiaco, near Rome. He died in 530 in the monastery at Monte Cassino, south of Rome, which was destroyed during World War Two. That monastery was later rebuilt.

A number of other churches were also ruined on Sunday, Italian media reported, including Norcia’s Cattedrale di Santa Maria, which was built in the 16th century, while the town hall belltower had deep cracks running through its walls.

However, most of Norcia’s homes appeared to have withstood the prolonged tremor, with residents praising years of investment by local authorities in anti-seismic protection.

In the nearby city of Rieti, patients were evacuated from a hospital to allow experts to check on structural damage, while hillroads across the region were littered with fallen rocks.

Sunday’s earthquake was felt as far north as Bolzano, near the border with Austria and as far south as the Puglia region at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.

It was also felt strongly in the capital, Rome, where transport authorities shut down the metro system for precautionary checks. Authorities also toured the city’s main Roman Catholic basilicas looking for possible damage.

Italy sits on two geological fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

Its deadliest quake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when a tremor followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones and Mark Bendeich; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Larry King)

Italian earthquakes cause widespread damage, but kill no one

An officer of the State Forestry Corp national police stands in front of a collapsed church in Campi di Norcia, central Italy

By Isla Binnie and Antonio Denti

VISSO, Italy (Reuters) – Earthquakes caused widespread damage and terrified residents in central Italy overnight but killed no one, two months after a strong quake left nearly 300 dead and razed villages in the same area.

Several people were slightly injured, but only a few needed hospital treatment, the Civil Protection Agency said.

In Visso, one of the larger hill towns hit, the mayor said most of the damage had been to buildings already weakened by the Aug. 24 earthquake.

“The situation is ugly and you can see the noticeable damage, but luckily I can say it’s better than it looks. We don’t have victims or seriously injured people or anyone missing,” Giuliano Pazzaglini said.

The quake was nonetheless a severe blow to a town that had started to work on rebuilding after the last tremor, Pazzaglini said, and the hours following it were full of anxiety for people in the border area of the Marche and Umbria regions.

Many people slept in their cars. In Campi, a town of about 200, rescue workers set up some 50 beds in a quake-proof building for people who could not sleep in their homes.

“I can’t shake off the fear,” said Mauro Viola, 64, who said he had not slept and had spent the night outside.

“I am afraid to see what my house looks like.”

Police had blocked off the road to his home with a bench, and Viola said a chapel nearby had collapsed.

Boulders tumbled down the valley into roads around Visso. Officials were restricting access to its historic center, awakening grim memories of the leveling of the hilltop town of Amatrice in August.

“The only time I have cried today was when I wasn’t allowed to go into the historic center,” said Visso restaurateur Elena Zabuchynska, 43.

“I thought of Amatrice, all fallen down, and I thought our city center might look like Amatrice.”

RUBBLE

The three main overnight quakes came about two hours apart. Close to Visso, the rose-windowed facade of a late 14th century church, San Salvatore a Campi di Norcia, was reduced to rubble.

The first tremor measured magnitude 5.4, causing many people to flee their homes and the second was stronger at 6.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A 4.9 aftershock came a couple hours after that, and dozens of weaker ones followed.

“The first tremor damaged buildings, with the second one we had collapses,” fire department official Rosario Meduri said.

He had come from southern Italy before Wednesday’s tremors to help secure structures damaged by the August earthquake that hit some 50 km (30 miles) to the south.

The quakes were probably a continuation of seismic activity that began in August, Massimiliano Cocco from Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The fact that the first earthquake was weaker than the second probably helped save lives because most people left their homes before the second, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said on state radio.

The government said it set aside 40 million euros ($44 million) during a cabinet meeting on Thursday for immediate costs related to the earthquakes. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi planned to visit the area hit hardest later in the day.

(Additional reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio; Writing by Steve Scherer and Isla Binnie; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Italy cannot handle the same number of migrant arrivals next year, says Renzi

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi talks to the media as he leaves a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium,

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Tuesday said that the country cannot handle the same number of migrant arrivals next year that it has seen in 2016, calling on other European countries to do more.

In an interview with RAI state television, Renzi repeated a threat to veto the disbursement of European Union funds to countries that refuse to help Italy and Greece, who have taken in hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past three years.

“Italy cannot take another year like the one we’ve just had,” Renzi said during the recording of a talk show. He said the flow of arrivals must be curbed by March, without saying what would happen if it was not limited.

From Friday until Sunday, Italy’s coastguard coordinated more than 6,000 sea rescues, bringing arrivals so far this year to almost 155,000, which was the total for all of 2015. In 2014 there were 170,000 arrivals.

Another 500 people were rescued from four different boats on Tuesday, the coastguard said in a statement.

For a third year, people smugglers are taking advantage of chaos in Libya to send migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Africa and the Middle East on overcrowded boats toward Italy and the EU.

More than 3,100 have died or disappeared trying to cross the the Mediterranean from North Africa this year, the International Organization for Migration estimates.

The prime minister has frequently denounced a lack of European solidarity amid the migrant crisis as Italy seeks EU approval for an expansionary budget that includes some 3.9 billion euros ($4.25 billion) in spending on migrants next year.

Renzi sharply rebuffed European Commission criticism of his budget for raising previously agreed deficit and debt targets.

“Instead of opening their mouths, they should open their wallets,” he said.

($1 = 0.9184 euros)

(Reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Alison Williams)

Italy’s Renzi says August quake caused at least 4 billion euros of damage

Italian Prime Minister Renzi addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York

ROME, Sept 23 (Reuters) – An earthquake that killed 297 people in central Italy last month caused damage worth at least 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday.

Renzi, who is looking for as much fiscal leeway as possible from the European Commission as he prepares his 2017 budget, has said he expects earthquake-related costs to be excluded from the EU’s budget deficit limits.

However, he has remained vague on whether those costs should include only the immediate aid and reconstruction effort for the towns affected, or also costs related to a broader project to make Italy’s buildings more earthquake-resistant.

“We are looking at a minimum of 4 billion euros ($4.48 billion),” Renzi told reporters on Friday in his first estimate of the extent of the damage in the mountain towns hit by the Aug. 24 quake.

He said all money spent on making Italy’s schools earthquake proof would be excluded from EU’s Stability Pact which sets deficit ceilings for the bloc’s members. It remains to be seen whether the EU Commission will agree with this approach.

The government, which will publish new economic forecasts next week, is expected to sharply raise its target for the 2017 budget deficit from the current goal of 1.8 percent of gross domestic product.

Brussels says it has granted Italy “unprecedented” budget flexibility in recent years and is concerned about Rome’s inability to bring down its public debt, the highest in the euro zone after Greece’s as a percentage of GDP.

Renzi has insisted that the EU’S fiscal rules should be relaxed, and has attacked his fellow leaders for failing to
acknowledge that austerity policies have been counter productive.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday Rome had already been given 19 billion euros of “flexibility” in its 2016 budget, in comments widely interpreted in Italy as a signal he may be reluctant to grant much more leeway for next year. ($1 = 0.8919 euros)

(Reporting By Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Italy rescues 3,000 migrants from Mediterranean as arrivals surge

A Red Cross member carries a child as migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy

ROME (Reuters) – Some 3000 migrants were saved in the Strait of Sicily in 30 separate rescue missions on Tuesday, the Italian coastguard said, bringing the total to almost 10,000 in two days and marking a sharp acceleration in refugee arrivals in Italy.

The migrants were packed on board dozens of boats, many of them rubber dinghies that become dangerously unstable in high seas. No details were immediately available on their nationalities.

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy,

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/ Antonio Parrinello

Data from the International Organization for Migration released on Friday said around 105,000 migrants had reached Italy by boat in 2016, many of them setting sail from Libya. An estimated 2,726 men, women and children have died over the same period trying to make the journey.
Favorable weather conditions this week have seen an increase in boats setting sail. Some 1,100 migrants were picked up on Sunday and 6,500 on Monday, in one of the largest influxes of refugees in a single day so far this year.

Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s migrant crisis for three years, and more than 400,000 have successfully made the voyage to Italy from North Africa since the beginning of 2014, fleeing violence and poverty.

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alison Williams)

Italy quake death toll hits 267, state funeral planned

A drone photo shows the damages following an earthquake in Pescara del Tronto, central Italy, August 25

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

PESCARA DEL TRONTO, Italy (Reuters) – Hopes of finding more survivors faded on Friday three days after a powerful earthquake hit central Italy, with the death toll rising to 267 and the rescue operation in some of the stricken areas called off.

Sniffer dogs and emergency crews continued to scour piles of rubble in Amatrice, a picturesque town popular with tourists which was leveled by Wednesday’s quake and where 207 bodies have been retrieved so far.

Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said around 15 people, including some children and the local baker, had not been accounted for. “Only a miracle can bring our friends back alive from the rubble, but we are still digging because many are missing,” he told reporters.

In nearby villages, such as Pescara del Tronto, rescuers pulled out after all the missing had been accounted for.

Italy plans to hold a state funeral for around 40 of the victims on Saturday, which will be held in the nearby city of Ascoli Piceno.

A day of national mourning was announced, with flags due to fly at half mast around the country for the dead, who include a number of foreigners.

The civil protection department in Rome said nearly 400 people were being treated for injuries in hospitals, and 40 of them were in critical condition. An estimated 2,500 people were left homeless by the most deadly quake in Italy since 2009.

Survivors with nowhere else to go are sleeping in neat rows of blue tents set up by emergency services close to their flattened communities. The government has promised to rebuild the region, but some local people feared that would never happen.

“I’m afraid our village and others like it will just die. Most people don’t live here year round anyway. In the winter time the towns are virtually empty,” said Salvatore Petrucci, 77, who lived in the nearby small village of Trisunga.

“We may be the last ones to have lived in Trisunga,” he said.

More than 920 aftershocks have hit the area since the original 6.2 magnitude quake struck early Wednesday. By Friday, most of the outlying communities were quiet and empty, buildings lying in crumpled mounds, the innards of private homes exposed to the skies and belongings scattered in the debris.

“We have removed the last bodies that we knew about,” said Paolo Cortelli, a member of the Alpine Rescue national service who helped to recover about 30 bodies from Pescara del Tronto.

“We don’t know, and we might never know, if the number of missing that we knew about actually corresponds to the people who were actually under the rubble.”

The foreigners who died in the disaster included six Romanians, a Spanish woman, a Canadian and an Albanian. The British embassy in Rome declined to comment on reports that three Britons, including a 14-year-old boy had died.

The area is popular with holidaymakers and local authorities were struggling to pin down how many visitors were present when the quake hit.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said 17 Romanians were still missing. Italy has a large Romanian community, and some of the victims were resident in the country.

FUNERAL

The first funeral of a victim was held in Rome on Friday, for Marco Santarelli, the 28-year-old son of a senior state official, who died in the family’s holiday home in Amatrice.

“I cannot find the words to describe the grief of a father who outlives his own children. Perhaps there are no words,” Marco’s father, Filippo Santarelli, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Hardly a single building was left unscathed in Amatrice, which was last year voted one of the most beautiful old towns in Italy and is famous for its local cuisine.

“Amatrice will have to be razed to the ground,” said mayor Pirozzi, who urged youngsters not to leave the area, saying that would mean the end of their community. “No night can last so long that the sun never rises again. I am convinced that Amatrice will rise again. We owe it to the 207 people who died here.”

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has declared a state of emergency for the region, allowing the government to release an immediate 50 million euros ($56 million) for the relief work.

He has promised to rebuild the shattered homes and said he would also renew efforts to bolster Italy’s flimsy defenses against earthquakes that regularly batter the country.

“We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories,” he told reporters in Rome on Thursday.

Italy has a poor record of rebuilding after quakes. About 8,300 people who were forced to leave their homes after a deadly earthquake in L’Aquila in 2009 are still living in temporary accommodation.

This latest disaster represents a major political challenge for Renzi, who has been in office for two years. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was widely criticized for what was perceived to be a botched response to the L’Aquila calamity.

Renzi declined to predict when the homeless might be rehoused. “This is not about setting challenges and making promises. We need the pace of a marathon runner,” he said.

Most of the buildings in the area were built hundreds of years ago, long before any anti-seismic building norms were introduced, helping to explain the widespread destruction.

Cultural Minister Dario Franceschini said all 293 culturally important sites, many of them churches, had either collapsed or been seriously damaged.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe. Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 while more than 300 died in the L’Aquila disaster.

($1 = 0.8857 euros)

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella, editing by David Stamp)

Italy quake death toll nears 250 as rescuers search demolished towns

Rescuers work at a collapsed building following an earthquake in Amatrice

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

AMATRICE, Italy (Reuters) – The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy reached at least 241 people on Thursday and could rise further after rescue teams worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble of flattened towns.

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.

The Civil Protection department officially revised the death toll down to 241 from a previous 247 given earlier on Thursday morning.

Officials said they expected to confirm more deaths as the search operation continued. Trucks full of rubble left the area every few minutes, including one in which a dusty doll could be seen lying on top of tonnes of debris.

On Thursday, the sun rose on frightened people who had slept in cars or tents, the earth continuing to tremble under their feet from aftershocks, hundreds of which have struck since the quake. Two registered 5.1 and 5.4, just before dawn.

“I haven’t slept much because I was really afraid,” said 70-year-old Arturo Onesi from the town of Arquata del Tronto, who spent the night in a tent camp for survivors and rescue workers.

The earthquake 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 epicenter.

Many of those killed or injured were holidaymakers in the four worst-hit towns – Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli – where populations increase by up to tenfold in the summer. That makes it harder to track the deaths.

One Spaniard, five Romanians, and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.

Aerial video taken by drones showed swathes of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, completely flattened. The town, known across Italy and beyond for a local pasta dish, had been filling up for the 50th edition of a popular food festival this weekend.

The mayor said the bodies of 15-20 tourists were believed to be under the rubble of the Hotel Roma, which he said had about 32 guests when it collapsed on Wednesday morning.

GIRL FOUND ALIVE

About 270 people injured in Wednesday’s quake were hospitalized, the Civil Protection department said, adding that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, army troops and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.

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 about 15 hours.

Many other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when a church bell tower toppled into their house in nearby Accumoli.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s cabinet was meeting on Thursday to decide emergency measures to help the affected communities.

“Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

The death toll appeared likely to rival or surpass that from the last major earthquake to strike Italy, which killed more than 300 people in the central city of L’Aquila in 2009.

While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L’Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The country’s most deadly earthquake 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.

(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli, Giulia Segreti and Roberto Mignucci; Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Graff)

At least 120 killed as quake flattens towns in central Italy

rescuers helping those in Italian quake

By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) – An earthquake flattened towns in central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 120 people and burying some alive in their sleep, with volunteers and firefighters racing to free those trapped under mounds of rubble as darkness fell.

The quake razed mountain homes and buckled roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km from the epicenter.

“I was blown away by what I saw. We haven’t stopped digging all day,” said Marcello di Marco, 34, a farmer who traveled from the town of Narni some 100 km away to help with emergency services’ rescue efforts in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.

In the nearby village of Accumoli, a family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house imploded.

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.

The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the Treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis dispatched part of the Holy See’s tiny firefighting force to help in the rescue.

Rescue workers used helicopters to pluck survivors to safety in more isolated villages cut off by landslides and rubble.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2 magnitude quake. Many of those killed or missing were visitors.

“It’s all young people here, it’s holiday season, the town festival was to have been held the day after tomorrow so lots of people came for that,” said Amatrice resident Giancarlo, sitting in the road wearing just his underwear.

“It’s terrible, I’m 65 years old and I have never experienced anything like this, small tremors, yes, but nothing this big. This is a catastrophe,” he said.

Scores of people are believed unaccounted for, with the presence of the holidaymakers making it difficult to tally.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who gave the latest toll figure after visiting the area, called for national unity.

“We Italians are very good at arguing and being polemical but now let’s stand in solidarity and pride alongside those who are rescuing others,” he said. “Today is a day for tears. Tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction.”

VOICES UNDER THE RUBBLE

Patients at the badly damaged hospital in Amatrice were moved into the streets and a field hospital was set up.

“Three quarters of the town is not there anymore,” Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi told state broadcaster RAI. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”

Accumoli’s mayor, Stefano Petrucci, said some 2,500 people were left homeless in the local community of 17 hamlets.

Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs. Wide cracks had appeared like open wounds on the buildings that were still standing.

The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio taking the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia. Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

It was relatively shallow at 4 km below the earth’s surface.

INGV reported 150 aftershocks in the 12 hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, about 75 km away from the hardest hit area, told Reuters.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly 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.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Gavin Jones, Stephen Jewkes, Eleanor Biles and Giulia Segreti; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Editing by Louise Ireland)