The number of people killed in an natural disaster that has wrecked parts of central Italy rose to 284 on Saturday, as the country started a day of mourning and prepared for a mass funeral for some of the victims.
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Due to the vast extent and severity of the damage, he could survey the town only at a distance because it was too risky to enter the sealed-off town center.
Emotions that had been dammed up for days broke in a crescendo of grief. A young man wept over a little girl’s small white coffin, while a woman nearby gently stroked another white coffin.
(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia). The coffin of 9-year-old Giulia Rinaldo, is carried outside the gymnasium at the end of the state funeral service in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016.
“It is a great tragedy”.
While most relatives who lost loved ones are still in shock, some are angry that it took rescue crews so long to reach badly-hit villages, Turton said. A day of national mourning was announced, with flags due to fly at half mast around the country for the dead, who include a number of foreigners.
“They were in an embrace”, D’Ercole said. He said that only together can we rebuild our houses and our churches and restore life to our communities.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is among those attending the funeral.
In the service, Bishop D’Ercole told how a four-year-old girl survived the quake thanks to the embrace of her older sister.
A wooden crucifix coming from the destroyed church of Pescara del Tronto is seen in the Ascoli Piceno gymnasium during the funeral service of some of the quake victims, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016.
The bishop told mourners that, when the firefighters recovered the two sisters, they were holding each other.
Despite this the authorities say they will continue the search until they are certain no-one is unaccounted for.
Nine bodies were recovered from the town on Saturday.
“The melancholy grabs on to your heart”. “An event like this weakens you physically and mentally”.
Some 400 people were injured and many driven out of their collapsed homes.
People attend a funeral service for victims of the quake, at a gymnasium arranged in a chapel of rest on August 27, 2016, in Ascoli Piceno, 3 days after a 6.2-magnitude natural disaster struck the region, killing some 281 people. And as we reported, the aftershocks have continued ever since, even as hopes fade that rescue crews will be able to find survivors of the powerful temblor.
The hall in the capital of the Marche region had been converted temporarily to a place of worship for the funeral of most of the people who perished in the villages of Arquata del Tronto and Pescara del Tronto in the region’s mountainous interior.
President Sergio Mattarella earlier visited Amatrice, the town with the most casualties. The president thanked rescue workers who have been working around the clock, some barely taking breaks for sleeping. Also hard hit were the towns of Arquato del Tronto, with 49, and Accumoli, with 11. At least 2,100 people were houses in makeshift tent cities.
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On Tuesday, a memorial service – without the bodies – will be held for the dead of Amatrice on that battered town’s outskirts.
