The death
toll from an earthquake that flattened parts of central Italy rose to 267 on
Friday as rescue workers pulled more bodies from mounds of debris and families
prepared to hold the first funerals.
The civil
protection department in Rome said nearly 400 people were being treated for
injuries in hospitals, and local media reports said about 40 of them were in
critical condition.
The earth
continued to tremble with aftershocks, with survivors sleeping for the second
night in tents set up by emergency services.
"It was
quite a tough night because you have a significant change in temperature here.
During the day, it is very, very hot and at night it is very, very cold,"
said Anna Maria Ciuccarelli of Arquata del Tronto.
"There
are still aftershocks preceded by booms and, for those of us who have just
lived through an earthquake, it has a great effect, particularly
psychologically," she said.
About 2,500
people were left homeless by Wednesday's 6.2 magnitude quake and the government
has promised to rebuild the devastated communities.
More than
920 aftershocks have hit the area around Amatrice and the nearby towns of
Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli. Nearly 60 of them have
struck since midnight.
Families
prepared to bury their dead, with the first funeral set for Friday morning in
Rome 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.
The funeral
of two children and their grandparents who died in Pescara del Tronto
originally set for Friday was put back until Saturday and will be attended by
Italy's president.
BODIES
The search
for survivors continued during the night in Amatrice, where 207 people are
known to have died, as emergency workers with sniffer dogs clambered over piles
of debris trying to find anyone still trapped under the rubble.
In other
towns and villages the rescue operation wound down.
"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
mountainous area is dotted with holiday homes and Amatrice was also filled with
visitors before a food festival that had been scheduled for this weekend.
Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi promised that the rebuilding effort would be his
government's top priority, but said he would also renew efforts to bolster
Italy's flimsy defences 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.
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.
SOURCE: REUTERS
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