An increasingly forlorn search for victims of the earthquake that brought carnage to central Italy entered a third day on Friday as the confirmed death toll climbed to 267.
Releasing the new count, Immacolata Postiglione, head of the Civil Protection agency’s emergency unit, indicated there had been no survivors found overnight in any of the remote mountain villages devastated by Wednesday’s powerful pre-dawn quake.
At least 367 people have been hospitalised with injuries but no one has been pulled alive from the piles of collapsed masonry since Wednesday evening.
As hundreds of people woke from a second night sleeping in cars or hastily erected tented villages, the area was rocked by a 4.8 magnitude aftershock just after 6:00 am local time, underlining the on tourism for the whole country in which they occur. Tourism is particularly important to Italy, contributing around four per cent of its GDP.
At least eight foreigners were among the dead,
according to media reports and updates from Foreign Ministries.