Update | Deadly Italy earthquake kills 159 as hundreds missing in flattened towns
Picturesque villages in mountainous central Italy demolished; Pope cancels speech and holds prays for victims
An earthquake flattened towns in central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 159 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 epicentre.
“I was blown away by what I saw. We haven’t stopped digging all day,” said Marcello di Marco, 34, a farmer who travelled 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 town isn’t here anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice. “I believe the toll will rise.”
Complicating matters was that the area is a popular vacation spot in summer, with populations swelling, making the number of people in the area at the time difficult to estimate.