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A powerful earthquake rattled a remote area of central Italy on Wednesday, leaving at least 120 people dead and scenes of carnage in mountain villages.
With 368 people injured and an unknown number trapped under rubble, the figure of dead and wounded was expected to rise in the wake of the pre-dawn quake, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned.
"This is not a final toll," he said.
Hundreds of people were to spend a chilly night in hastily-assembled tents with the risk of aftershocks making it far too risky for them to return home.
Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the quake, which had a magnitude of between 6.0 and 6.2.
It hit a remote area straddling Umbria, Marche and Lazio at a time of year when second home owners and other visitors swell the numbers staying there. Many of the victims were from Rome.
The devastated area is just north of L'Aquila, the city where some 300 people died in another quake in 2009.
The epicentre of the quake was about 170 km northeast of Rome near the town of Norcia in the region of Umbria. The tremors were sufficiently strong to wake residents of central Rome.
Sergio Pirozzi, mayor of Amatrice, a mountain village close to the epicentre, said that the town ‘isn’t here anymore’ and many residents are buried under the debris.
At least 10 people died in Pescara, a hamlet that is part of the bigger village of Arquata del Tronto, as per the civil protection officers cited by the ANSA news agency.
Six bodies were recovered at Amatrice, according to the president of the Lazio region, and two at Accumoli, according to the town’s mayor.
Amatrice is famous in Italy as a beauty spot and is a popular holiday destination for Romans seeking cool mountain air at the height of the summer. It was packed with visitors at the peak of the summer season.
The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said at least six people had died there, including a family of four, and two others.
‘We have a tragedy here. For the moment one death is confirmed but there are another four people under the rubble and they are not responding. It is a disaster, we have no light, no telephones, the rescue services have not got here yet,’ Petrucci was quoted as saying by national broadcaster Rai.
It was Italy's most powerful earthquake since the 2009 disaster in L'Aquila.
The first quake struck shortly after 3.30 am (local time), according to the United States Geological Survey, and a 5.4 magnitude aftershock followed an hour later.
USGS’s PAGER system, which predicts the impact of earthquakes, issued a red alert -- suggesting significant casualties and damage based on previous quake data.