MaltaMedia.com

The Foreign Ministry has set up a hotline where people can phone to give information on relatives they may have in the earthquake-hit Aquilia region in Italy. The number is 21242191.The ministry also confirmed it has offered to help a Maltese nun whose house in Aquila collapsed as a result of the 6.2 magnitude earthquake which struck Central Italy at 3.30 am on Monday morning. The nun was not injured but lost all her belongings.

The Maltese Consul in the region is trying to contact five Maltese families who live in the area, but his job has been made more difficult because his office collapsed as a result of the earthquake.

As a precaution, a group of Maltese children in Italy on a sports camp accompanied by a number of adults, were also evacuated from their hotel situated about 100km away from Aquila.

The Italian Home Ministry said the official death toll has so far risen to over 100, and 50,000, possibly even as many as 100,000 people, are homeless

Foreign Minister Tonio Borg, who is in Turkey, has written to Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini to express Malta’s condolences and solidarity.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that there were over 4,000 rescuers at work extracting people from the rubble. He also said that a camp with 2,000 tents, each capable of housing 8-10 people, was currently being set up in the city for those who had lost their homes in the disaster, while around 4,000 beds in hotels in the area had also been reserved for survivors.

A spokesman for the Maltese Foreign Ministry, who spoke to The Times, said the Consul for Malta in the area had so far not received any reports of Maltese casualties. Five Maltese families live in the region. Tours are also organised to the area, although it does not appear that there were any today, the report said.

The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at 0330 CEST on Monday morning close to L’Aquila city, 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome. A civil protection official said 3,000 to 10,000 buildings in the medieval city may have been damaged.

“This means that the we’ll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months,” Agostino Miozzo told Sky Italia. “Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight.” Earlier, the mayor of L’Aquila, Massimo Cialente, said some 100,000 people had left their homes. A university dormitory, churches and a bell tower are believed to be among the buildings that had collapsed.

Residents and rescuers were using their bare hands to clear the debris from collapsed buildings. There were calls for quiet as they listened for signs of life amid the rubble. Survivors, some still in their night clothes, hugged each other as they waited for news of friends and relatives.

Hundreds waited for treatment at the city’s main hospital, where doctors were forced to treat people in the open air because only one operating room was functioning, Italian news agency Ansa reports. The city’s university hospital has been declared off limits for fear it will collapse.

The death toll has been rising steadily throughout the morning. But with many villages in the surrounding area still cut off by landslides, it is thought the full scale of the disaster will not become clear for many hours. Phone and power lines remain down, and some bridges and roads have been closed as a precaution.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency, and is reported to have cancelled a visit to Moscow to travel to the quake-hit region. The earthquake happened hours after a 4.6-magnitude tremor shook the area but caused no reported damage. Thousands of the city’s 70,000 residents ran into the streets in panic during the 30 second tremor.

Powerful earthquakes are relatively rare in Italy, which lies on two fault lines, the BBC reports. In 2002, an earthquake in the southern Italian town of San Giuliano di Puglia killed more than 20 people. In 1997, 13 people died when a strong earthquake struck Italy’s central region.