Rome: Central Italy was struck by a powerful, 6.2-magnitude quake in the early hours of Wednesday, leaving at least three people dead and devastating dozens of mountain villages.
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There are people trapped under the rubble of collapsed houses in the central town of Amatrice, RAI state television reported.
Residents of Rome, some 170km from the epicentre, were woken by the quake, which rattled furniture and swayed lights in most of central Italy.
Amatrice Mayor Pirozzi told state-run RAI radio and Sky TG24 that residents were buried under collapsed buildings, that the lights had gone out and that heavy equipment was needed to clear streets clogged with debris. RAI reported that two Afghan girls, believed to be asylum-seekers, were also missing in the town.
The 6.2-magnitude tremor hit at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) around 43 kilometers from the town of Rieti, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The town of Amatrice was badly damaged according to Reuters.
“Much of our patrimony is damaged, but there are no victims”, Mayor Nicola Alemanno told RaiNews24. At least 11 people were reported dead in two hard-hit towns where rescue crews raced to dig survivors out of the rubble, but the toll was expected to rise as crews reached homes in more remote hamlets.
In 2009 a 6.3-magnitude natural disaster struck in L’Aquila, 55 miles south of the latest quake, killing more than 300 people.
The shallow quake struck 10 kilometres (six miles) southeast of Norcia, a town in the province of Perugia in southeastern Umbria.
“Half of the town doesn’t exist anymore”, Perozzi said.
An quake in 2009 killed more than 300 people near the city of L’Aquila, about 113 kilometers southeast of Amatrice.
“I could feel the ground shake and my three dogs started to go a little insane, running around and barking”, Maurizio Serra, 56, told USA TODAY. “I don’t know what we’ll do”. “We can see several casualties related to this event”.
The Associated Press reported that there were no immediate reports of damage.
It described the buildings as un-reinforced brick with mud and concrete frame with infill construction.
Officials say Accumoli and Amatrice have been the hardest hit by the quake.
The quake struck at 3.36am with its epicentre in Accumoli, Rieti, about 70km north of Rome.
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It was hit by a major natural disaster in 1979, which killed five people, and it is relatively near l’Aquila, where a 5.9 quake killed 309 people seven years ago.
