A powerful pre-dawn earthquake devastated mountain villages in Central Italy on Wednesday, leaving at least 120 people dead and dozens more injured, trapped or missing.
Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the quake, which had a magnitude of between 6.0 and 6.2, according to monitors.
It hit a remote area straddling Umbria, Marche and lazio, to the north of a region devastated by a quake in 2009, rousing residents and vacationers in terrifying fashion.
Italy’s civil protection unit said in the first official death toll there had been 120 deaths in and around the villages of Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto.
“There are still so many people under masonry, so many missing,” said Immacolata Postiglione, the head of the unit’s emergency department.
“My sister and her husband are under the rubble, we’re waiting for diggers but they can’t get up here,” Guido Bordo, 69, told AFP. “There’s no sound from them, we only heard their cats. I wasn’t here, as soon as the quake happened I rushed here. They managed to pull my sister’s children out, they’re in hospital now,” he added.
Other victims included a nine-month-old baby whose parents survived.
But two other children aged four and seven were saved by their quick-thinking grandmother, who ushered them under a bed as soon as the shaking began, according to reports.