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‘A number of British nationals’ affected by Italy quake

The girl had been trapped upside down for 17 hours in Pescara del Tronto when one person spotted something moving in the ruins of a building, according to Sky News.

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“We are from Rome but there are firefighting teams from many parts of Italy”, said Marco Piergallini, a firefighter from the Italian capital.

Emergency crews searched for survivors on Thursday after a 6.2 magnitude natural disaster killed more than 200 people in central Italy.

Most of the deaths come from the three towns nearest the epicenter of the quake: 184 in Amatrice, 46 in Arquata del Tronto and 11 in Accumoli.

Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi visited the quake-affected area on Wednesday.

The UK government has already offered to help with the recovery effort, as about 5,000 rescue workers are combing the rubble for survivors. “Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction”, he told reporters late on Wednesday.

“Many cases have shown in the past that even after two days, people can be rescued alive”, said Luigi D’Angelo from Italy’s Civil Protection Department.

Wednesday’s quake almost leveled the towns of Amatrice, Accumoli and Pescara del Tronto. But the region’s steep terrain and narrow, winding roads are making it tough for officials to move rescue equipment around. The 6.2 magnitude quake leveled most of three cities.

Immacolata Postiglione, head of emergency services for the Italian Civil Protection Agency, also told reporters in Rome that another 264 people had been hospitalized with injuries from the quake, which hit early Wednesday morning. Nearly all the houses there had collapsed, the mayor said.

Major quakes in Italy are often followed by criminal charges being filed against architects, builders and officials responsible for public works if the buildings crumble.

In hard-hit Pescara del Tronto, firefighter Franco Mantovan said Thursday that crews knew of three residents still under the rubble but in a hard-to-reach area.

“We saw unfortunately only bodies pulled out”, CNN contributor Barbie Nadeau said from the village, where 22 people were killed.

In September 1997, a 6.0 magnitude natural disaster in the area killed 11 people and injured more than 100, destroying approximately 80,000 homes in the Marche and Umbria regions.

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Hundreds of people spent the night sleeping in their cars, in hastily-assembled tents or as guests of families in nearby areas less affected by the quake.

A survivor is pulled out of the rubble in Amatrice central Italy where a 6.1 earthquake struck just after 3:30 a.m. Wednesday Aug. 24 2016