ASCOLI PICENO, ITALY // Italy said a tearful farewell at funerals on Saturday for dozens of its earthquake victims as the country observed a day of mourning for the 290 known to have died in the disaster.
President Sergio Mattarella and Premier Matteo Renzi joined grieving family members for a state funeral for 35 of the victims of Wednesday's devastating earthquake. In highly emotional scenes, a young man wept over a little girl's white coffin, while a woman gently stroked another small casket.
Mourners — many of the injured among them —, wept among the coffins bedecked with flowers, and held each other in a sweltering community gym transformed into a makeshift chapel in the town of Ascoli Piceno as the local bishop, Giovanni D'Ercole, urged them to rebuild their communities.
"Don't be afraid to cry out your suffering, but please do not lose courage," the bishop told them. ""Together we will rebuild our houses and churches, together above all we will restore life back to our communities ... the village bells will ring once more."
Hundreds of local people gathered outside the gym in support. "It is a great tragedy. There are no words to describe it," said Gina Razzetti, who lives in the town. "Each one of us has our pain inside. We are thinking about the families who lost relatives, who lost their homes, who lost everything."
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck at 3:36am and was felt across central Italy, as far as Rome, 170 kilometres away. The death toll has steadily risen as rescue workers continue to find bodies buried in rubble. Nobody has been found alive in the ruins since Wednesday, and hopes have faded of finding any more survivors.
The town of Amatrice bore the brunt of destruction with 230 fatalities. Eleven others died in nearby Accumoli and 49 more in Arquata del Toronto.
Saturday's mass funeral involved most of the dead from Arquata del Tronto, 25 kilometres to the south-west of Ascoli Piceno. Other funerals took place on Friday, with the majority still to come.
One of the small caskets was for nine-year-old Giulia Rinaldo who protected her younger sister, Giorgia, with her own body. Giorgia, whose fourth birthday was on Saturday survived against all the odds, one of the last to be pulled alive from the rubble. She is now recovering in hospital next door to the gym where the funerals took place.
Bishop D'Ercole recounted how Giorgia was found in her sister's arms. "The older sister, Giulia, was spread over the smaller one. They were in an embrace," he said. "Life and death came face to face and for Giorgia, life won."
A note, apparently left by one of the rescue workers on her coffin read, "Ciao, little one. Sorry that we got there too late."
. Many of the victims were either elderly or very young like 18-month-old Marisol Piermarini. The town was full of grandchildren visiting their grandparents for the last days of their summer holidays.
"The melancholy grips your heart. You feel a sense of weakness, of depression," said Fiore Ciotto, a resident of Ascoli Piceno. "Something like this weakens you physically and mentally."
Emergency services are more confident that they have accounted for everyone in the smaller outlying hamlets to the north of Amatrice — some of which have been so badly damaged there are doubts as to whether they will ever be inhabited again. Marco Beltrame, 28, who lost his aunt and uncle when the earthquake struck Saletta, their one-street hamlet, said, "Saletta will disappear like so many tiny places."
But in Amatrice, three more bodies were found buried under what remains of the Hotel Roma.
The night before the funeral brought more fear with a series of aftershocks. The strongest, at 4:50am, had a magnitude of 4.2, according to the US. Geological Survey, while the Italian geophysics institute measured it at 4.
The Italian institute and other authorities say the earthquake caused the ground below Accumoli to sink 20 centimetres (8 inches), according to satellite images.
Many people left homeless have been spending their nights in tent cities where volunteers have been working to provide basic amenities and nearly 400 people are still in hospital, some with life-threatening injuries. There are at least 16 foreigners among the dead — ten Rumanians, three Britons and one each from Canada, El Salvador and Spain. Sixteen Rumanians remain unaccounted for.
With emotions still raw, some families chose not to take up the offer of state funerals.
"Why attend? To listen to politicians? They always say the same thing — that they stand with us and that it must never happen again ... always the same thing!" said one inconsolable woman after identifying a relative in Amatrice.
The government has pledged to support immediate reconstruction. Prime minister Renzi has declared a state of emergency for the regions affected, releasing an initial tranche of 50 million euros ($56 million) in emergency aid.
The total rebuilding operation is forecast to cost over a billion euros.
* Associated Press
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