sht too bad it wasnt 7000 or 70 000 cant stand mother fckers
L'AQUILA, Italy - A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings as residents slept early Monday, killing at least 70 people and trapping many more, officials said. Tens of thousands were homeless and at least 1,500 injured.
The earthquake's epicenter was about 70 miles northeast of Rome near the medieval city of L'Aquila.
"A few houses have remained standing, but just a few," Stefania Pezzopane, provincial president of L'Aquila, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
The earthquake struck at 3:32 a.m. local time in a quake-prone Abruzzo region that has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April. The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday's quake was magnitude 6.3, but Italy's National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8.
Civil Protection chief Guido Bertolaso said 70 people had been killed, but Italy's La Repubblica newspaper said that rescue workers were reporting 92 deaths.
Officials said the death toll was likely to rise as rescue crews clawed through the debris of fallen homes.
L'Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said some 100,000 people were homeless. It was not clear if that estimate included surrounding towns. Some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed, officials said.
