Italian rescue workers carry a body. Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters
Rescue workers in central Italy were working last night to free hundreds of people feared trapped under rubble, after the deadliest earthquake to strike the country in three decades caused widespread destruction across the mountainous region of Abruzzo.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, declared a state of emergency and cancelled a trip to Russia to travel to the epicentre of Monday morning's quake, close to the medieval city of L'Aquila, 60 miles north-east of Rome. He said that in some cases rescuers were digging with their bare hands.
Having climbed steadily all day yesterday, the official total last night stood at more than 150 dead and more than 1,500 injured. Hoever unconfirmed reports quoting hospital sources last night put the total at more than 200.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 buildings had collapsed in the quake, an official at the local civil protection agency said, and at least 50,000 people are homeless.
Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of parliament, said some small towns had been "virtually destroyed in their entirety". Early rescue efforts were hampered by rubble strewn across roads and the collapse of several bridges.
"We will work for the next 48 hours without any stop, because we have to save lives," Francesco Rocca, the head of Italy's Red Cross, told BBC television. "We estimate that hundreds of people could still be alive under the buildings."
The quake, measured at 6.3 on the Richter scale by the US Geological Survey, struck at 3.32am local time and lasted for "20 interminable seconds", said the mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente, who described its effects as "terrible, really terrible".
Streets in the city were carpeted with thick dust yesterday, as helicopters hovered overhead and sirens screamed. Part of a university residence and a hotel were destroyed, and the quake brought down the bell tower of a church in the centre of the city. One local man, standing next to a head-high pile of rubble, said: "This building was four storeys high."
Scores of people lined up with suitcases on the roads leading out of the city, waiting to be evacuated from the area. Others, dazed, huddled in blankets close to the ruins of their homes, or assisted the well-organised rescue effort in a desperate hunt for missing relatives. Frequent aftershocks struck the town throughout the day, provoking cries of alarm.
"I woke up hearing what sounded like a bomb," said L'Aquila resident Angela Palumbo, 87. "We managed to escape with things falling all around us. Everything was shaking, furniture falling. I don't remember ever seeing anything like this in my life."
"Our house was destroyed but we got out," said Marion Cadman, a teacher at the English school of L'Aquila. "Now we're in limbo and just glad to have a tent.
"There was a first tremor around a quarter to 11 and we considered going out, but we didn't as we had become so used to them. Then the top floor fell down on the lower one and the corridor was smashed. Our 18-year-old daughter got under the bed as she had been trained to do and we got out before the next big one. We will spend the night in someone's garden. I don't think I will be sleeping between four walls for some time."
Graziella Fantasia, also a teacher in the city, said her family had lost two houses, one in the suburbs of L'Aquila and one in a nearby village. "We have no homes. Now we are waiting because the earth is still moving. We will spend the night in the village where it is better, but it's not safe to stay in houses. A lot of people are in tents. Wherever there is open space there are people and lots of tents."
Dozens of remote villages in the area were also affected, with at least 10 reported killed in the village of Onna. "Almost all the old village is destroyed, 99% of it," a man in Tempera, a few miles to the east of L'Aquila, told the Guardian. "We have already found 10 bodies."
Berlusconi said that 4,000 hotel rooms had been requisitioned along the Adriatic coast and that 20,000 beds in tents were being provided, while stadiums were also being prepared. No one would be allowed to stay in damaged buildings because of the risk of further quakes, he said. Field hospitals were set up after part of L'Aquila's hospital was deemed unsafe and had to be evacuated. More than 5,000 emergency workers were involved in the rescue effort, the prime minister said, adding: "I want to say something important: no one will be abandoned to their fate."
The EU offered immediate assistance, as did Russia and Israel, but an Italian government spokesman said the situation was under control at present. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said Britain stood "ready to do what we can".
Berlusconi said he would finalise his funding plans last night, but indicated that he planned to seek assistance from an EU fund for disaster relief.
A number of British aid agencies said they had received no requests for aid, but were monitoring the situation and were ready to respond. Pete Garratt, relief operations manager with the British Red Cross, said its Italian counterpart had "significant resources in emergency response".
The earthquake is the worst to hit Italy since 1980, when 2,735 died in a quake measuring 6.5 that struck close to Salerno in southern Italy, and caused widespread damage in nearby Naples. That disaster prompted the introduction of new regulations designed to strengthen constructions in the event of an earthquake. Many of the buildings destroyed in yesterday's tremor appeared to have been earlier, dating from the 1960s and 1970s or, in remote villages, to be medieval structures.
There were questions yesterday about how so many buildings could have been destroyed. Gian Michele Calvi, an earthquake expert at the University of Pavia, said that Italy was in the habit of forgetting lessons. "This country is reminded of the risk of earthquakes only when it finds itself under the rubble," he told Corriere della Sera. "The fact that two of three operating rooms at L'Aquila hospital are no longer usable is something not worthy of a civilised country."
