ACCUMOLI (ITALY): A powerful pre-dawn earthquake devastated mountain villages in central Italy today, leaving at least 73 people dead, dozens more injured or trapped under the rubble and thousands temporarily homeless.
Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the pre-dawn 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 villagers and vacationers in terrifying fashion.
Italy’s civil protection unit confirmed 73 fatalities in and around the villages of Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto.
“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 reporters in the tiny village of Illica, near Accumoli.
“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, wringing his hands in anguish. (AGENCIES)
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