L'AQUILA (Italy) - THE death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy rose to 207 on Tuesday and aftershocks hampered the race to dig possible survivors out of the debris.
Rescuers worked under floodlights through the night and thousands of people whose homes were wrecked sheltered in tents and cars.
Dazed survivors hunt for kin in Italian quake town
L'AQUILA (Italy) - DESPERATE for help in digging out his 60-year-old mother from under a heap of mangled metal and concrete, Tancredi Vicentini ran after local firemen down a rubble-strewn street in L'Aquila pleading for help.
A few firemen clambered up on top of the rubble and began picking up pieces with their hands, but the digging ended as abruptly as it started.
L'AQUILA (Italy)- EXPERT cavers rescued a woman from
the rubble of L'Aquila early on Tuesday, 23 hours after an earthquake devastated the historic Italian town.
Rescuers said there were still more people stuck under collapsed buildings.
POLICE patrolled houses ripped open by the quake and arrested several people for looting. Thousands of tents were put up in parks and on football pitches to shelter the homeless for the night and hotels on the Adriatic coast were requisitioned.
'It's been such a hard and long day. Now that we are sitting here in our car it's all beginning to sink in,' said L'Aquila resident Piera Colucci as she prepared to sleep in her vehicle.
A CAMP was set up on a sports field outside medieval L'Aquila but there were not enough tents and most people spent the night in their cars as temperatures in the mountainous, windy area hovered near freezing.
'I can't even bear to think of the future,' said Angela Camon, 37, who spent the night in a tent with her husband and a bible. 'There is nothing to go back to.'
'The hopes of finding anyone under the rubble now is very small,' said a civil protection agency official at a camp set up outside L'Aquila, the historic mountain city shattered by the quake.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said 207 people were now confirmed as dead in the worst quake to strike Italy in 30 years. Of some 1,500 people injured, about 100 were in serious condition.
The new aftershocks struck fear into people, with residents running out of tents screaming and crying after a particularly strong tremor. Buildings shook and masonry fell onto the streets but no new injuries were reported.
That aftershock, which hit at about at 11.26 am (5.26 pm Singapore time) and registered 4.7 on the Richter scale, was felt as far away as Rome, where furniture swayed on the upper floors of buildings.
Officials revised the estimated number of homeless to 17,000 from a previous 50,000 and the number of those listed as missing was under 50.
But officials in the rugged region some 100 km east of Rome said some people who lived there were undocumented immigrants working in agriculture and they would be difficult to account for. -- REUTERS
