Strong earthquake hits central Italy; 20 dead

L'AQUILA, Italy — A powerful earthquake struck central Italy early Monday, killing at least 20 people, collapsing buildings and leaving thousands of people homeless, officials and news reports said.

Officials said the death toll was likely to rise as rescue crews made their way through the debris. Firefighters aided by dogs were trying to rescue people from crumbled homes, including a student dormitory in the city of L'Aquila where half a dozen university students were believed trapped.

Outside the half-collapsed dorm, tearful students huddled together wrapped in blankets, some still in their slippers.

"We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down," said student Luigi Alfonsi, 22. "I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me."

The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude of the quake was 6.3, though Italy's National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8.

The quake struck about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Rome at 3:32 a.m. local time (0132 GMT), officials said. The Civil Protection Department said the epicenter was near L'Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo region.

By early morning, the death toll stood at 20, including five children, with some 30 people unaccounted for, carabinieri paramilitary police said. In addition to L'Aquila, the town of Castelnuovo appeared hard hit, with five of the dead there.

"It's the worst tragedy since the start of the millennium," said Guido Bertolaso, the head of the Civil Protection Department.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds to deal with the disaster. He said he was weighing whether to cancel a planned visit to Russia to deal with the crisis.

In L'Aquila, residents and rescue workers were hauling away debris from collapsed buildings by hand while bloodied victims waited to be tended to in hospital hallways or outside in the hospital courtyard. On the city's dusty streets as aftershocks continued to rumble through, residents hugged one another, prayed quietly or frantically tried to call relatives.

"We left as soon as we felt the first tremors," said Antonio D'Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L'Aquila with a huge suitcase piled with clothes he had thrown together. "We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pajamas."