A total of at least 241 people were confirmed to have been killed in the magnitude 6.2 quake which struck the border region between Lazio, Umbria and Marche early Wednesday, Italy’s civil protection agency said on Wednesday.
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The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.
After more digging, the child’s legs became visible to the rescue workers as they worked to free the child.
The Civil Protection Department says roughly 5,000 people are involved in operations following the quake.
While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L’Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake. The Romanian government alone said 11 of its citizens were missing.
“We knew it was an quake”, she said.
The aftermath of the deadly 6.2-magniture natural disaster that devastated central Italy has caused further tragedy, as the hard-hit areas of Amatrice, Accumoli and Pescara del Tronto were riddled with hundreds of aftershocks, with some coming as late as Thursday. The death toll has risen to 247.
Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi visited the quake-affected area on Wednesday.
Officials said that the heaviest number of casualties was in Amatrice where 184 people died.
He said: “My deepest sympathies are with the Italian people and everyone affected by the bad quake that struck central Italy”. In the case of the L’Aquila quake, prosecutors also put six geologists on trial for allegedly having failed to adequately warn residents about the temblor.
While the government was already looking ahead to reconstruction, rescue workers on the ground still had days and weeks of work ahead of them.
Rescue workers in Italy were jubilant Wednesday as they pulled a 10-year-old girl from the wreckage of a massive quake.
The town’s mayor, Sergio Pirozzi, said up to 200 of the dead were Amatrice residents or visitors who had come to the area in anticipation of the 50th annual festival celebrating “spaghetti all’Amatriciana”, which was due to take place this weekend.
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But in many other cases, wails of grief rang out when bodies emerged.
