ROME: Most powerful earthquake in 36 years dealt a new blow Sunday to the country’s seismically vulnerable heart, sending terrified residents fleeing for the third time in nine weeks and flattening a revered six-century-old church.
Fabrizio Curcio, head of the national civil protection agency, said around a dozen people had been injured but that there did not appear to have been any fatalities.
“We are checking, there are several people injured but for the moment we have had no reports of victims,” Curcio said.
The quake struck struck at 7:40 am (0640 GMT) near the small central mountain town of Norcia, unleashing a shock felt in the capital Rome and even in Venice, 300 kilometres (200 miles) away.
It measured 6.6 on the so-called moment magnitude scale, according to US geologists, while Italian monitors estimated it at 6.5.
It was Italy’s biggest quake since a 6.9-magnitude events struck the south of the country in 1980, leaving 3,000 people dead.
