Disaster-recovery workers have rescued a young girl from a mound of rubble in Pescara del Tronto in a small miracle following a powerful earthquake that reduced the entire central Italian town to dust.
The rescuers dug into the rubble to loosen the dazed girl from the grip of ancient stone and wood where houses once stood.
"You can hear something under here. Quiet, quiet," one rescue worker said, before soon urging her on: "Come on, Giulia, come on, Giulia. ... Watch your head."
Cheers broke out when she was pulled out and into the arms of one of the workers.
Two women ran up the street yelling "She's alive!"
Chief firefighter Danilo Dionesei confirmed the girl was pulled out alive and was taken to a nearby hospital.
He didn't immediately give any further details about her condition.
Pescara del Tronto, which sits high in the mountains of central Italy was completely obliterated after the 6.2-magnitude earthquake shattered towns through central Italy on Wednesday.
The death toll was at 20 on Thursday but authorities said it might rise.
The temblor shook the Lazio region and Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic coast, a highly seismic area that has witnessed major quakes in the past.
Death toll rises to 159
Italian authorities say that the death toll in an earthquake on Wednesday has risen to 159.
The civil protection agency gave the updated figure shortly before midnight in Italy, some 20 hours after the earthquake struck. The tremors reduced three towns to rubble and sparked urgent search efforts.
Among the victims of an earthquake in Italy was an 18-month-old girl whose mother survived the deadly earthquake of 2009 in nearby L'Aquila and moved away from there after that terrible experience.
The news agency ANSA reported that the toddler, Marisol Piermarini, was sleeping in her bed in the family's vacation home in Arquata del Tronto when the quake struck early Wednesday.
Her mother, Martina Turco, survived the earthquake that struck L'Aquila, killing more than 300 people. Now she is being treated in a hospital after being pulled from the rubble as the family mourns the death of the little girl.
Rubble of a building collapsed in Amatrice, central Italy, where a 6.1 earthquake struck just after 3:30 a.m., Italy, 24 August 2016. Source: AAP
Rescue efforts suspended
A rescue official says Italian rescue workers have been forced to suspend their search at the site of a hotel that was badly damaged in Wednesday's earthquake.
Officials say about 70 people had been staying at the Hotel Roma in the central Italian town of Amatrice when the quake struck early Wednesday. Five bodies have been pulled from the rubble so far.
A rescue worker told The Associated Press about 10 p.m. that it was too dark and dangerous to continue, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. An AP photographer went to the site and saw it was pitch black.
One of the people killed in the rubble of the hotel was an 11-year-old boy who had initially given signs of life.
Overnight searchers for earthquake survivors or victims were continuing in some other places in central Italy.
