L’AQUILA, Italy Powerful aftershocks jolted this crumbling city on Tuesday again, rescue efforts were disturbed and already fragile buildings, including the cupola of L’Aquila’s cathedral, damaged even more. The death toll from Monday’s earthquake rose Wednesday to 250, including a young couple Lorenzo Cinì, 23, and his girlfriend, students whose bodies were pulled from the rubble of their apartment as friends and family members sobbed.
“Today, I called but there was no answer,” said a friend, Enrico Giancarli, of Lorenzo Cinì Mr. Giancarli said he feared the worst when he saw Mr. Cinì’s Smart car buried under rubble at the end of the block.
Just east of L’Aquila in the rural village of Onna, one of the hardest-hit areas, authorities said 40 of the 300 residents were perished, many of them were children. But hope had not run out, as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in L’Aquila surveying the damage, pledged to continue rescue operations for at least 48 hours more.
Just blocks away from where the young couple’s bodies were found, rescue workers pulled a 20-year-old woman alive from the rubble, where she had been trapped for 42 hours, the Italian news media reported.
The woman, Eleanora Calesini, emerged conscious and wearing pajamas, and said she had been trapped with rubble within inches of her body.
So far, about 100 survivors have been pulled from the rubble in L’Aquila, and Mr. Berlusconi said more might be found. He thanked the rescue teams, saying that with the aftershocks, they were facing grave risks.
The prime minister declared a local state of emergency on Monday. After originally declining foreign aid, Mr. Berlusconi said that Italy would gladly accept the support offered by President Obama and would devote it to preserving the region’s cultural and artistic heritage.
Just before 8 p.m. on Tuesday, L’Aquila was jolted by a serious aftershock, which had a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 and could be felt as far away as Rome. Officials then closed off the town’s historic center for fear of further collapse.
Yet another tremor hit L’Aquila after 11 p.m., while several others were felt in the Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo regions in central Italy, and Calabria in the south, the ANSA news service reported
