Fresh aftershocks caused panic in Italy’s earthquake zone yesterday, terrifying the thousands of homeless victims trying to sleep in crowded tent camps as the death toll reached 275.
Two lifeless bodies were pulled from the ruins of a student dormitory in the center of the Abruzzo capital L’Aquila early in the morning after a night punctuated by three powerful aftershocks.
Hundreds of people could be spotted sleeping in their cars and soldiers were in their trucks with the engines running as the early spring temperature hovered around 5ºC.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Monday’s quake has claimed 275 lives the latest toll reported by Italian television showed, with between 20 and 30 people still missing and 179 of the injured in a serious condition, police said.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the search for survivors would be extended by two days to Sunday, though hopes were fading fast and aftershocks were complicating efforts by destabilizing the search-and-rescue sites.
The strongest overnight aftershock, coming just before 3am, registered 5.2 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as Rome, a two-hour drive to the southwest.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano was expected in the devastated city later in the day, after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made three visits to the region in as many days.
Berlusconi’s government has estimated 3 billion euros (US$4 billion) will be needed to repair or rebuild some 10,000 buildings damaged in the quake.
The first funerals were held on Wednesday as plans were announced for a national memorial service for those who lost their lives in the disaster.
Vatican No. 2 Tarcisio Bertone is to lead the observance today, which has been declared a national day of mourning, in a suburb of L’Aquila where most of the bodies are lying in a hangar at a police barracks.
Thousands attended the funeral of 25-year-old student Danilo Ciolli in his hometown in the neighboring province of Molise, ANSA news agency reported.
Giuseppe Chiavaroli, who was 24 and played minor league soccer, was also laid to rest in Pescara province on the Adriatic coast to the east.
Berlusconi said 31 tent cities and 24 field kitchens had been set up and 14 roving medical units deployed, while raising the estimate of homeless to 28,000 from a previous figure of 17,000.
Nearly 18,000 people were sheltered in some 3,000 tents at the camps dotted around L’Aquila, he said.
Some 7,000 police, soldiers and other emergency service personnel and volunteers were taking part in the earthquake operation, including psychologists offering grief and trauma counseling.
Outside the area’s main hospital — condemned and evacuated because of damage from the quake — doctors performed more than 280 operations in less than 36 hours, an official said.
The most serious involved cranial, pelvic and chest fractures, as well as internal bleeding, heart problems and epileptic seizures, Mario Caroli said.
Donations poured in Wednesday in special bank accounts set up to help the survivors and the Italian Senate’s 315 members decided to have 1,000 euros deducted from their salaries for the cause.
US pop diva Madonna also made a donation to the Italian hometown of her ancestors, a spokeswoman for the star confirmed on Wednesday.
The singer’s New York-based public relations team confirmed Madonna had made a donation — which People magazine reported to be US$500,000 — but did not give the amount.
Madonna’s paternal grandparents lived in the village of Pacentro in the Abruzzo region.
“I am happy to lend a helping hand to the town that my ancestors are from,” Madonna said in a statement.
“My heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones or their homes,” she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS