ITALY: They ran out of white baby coffins in San Giuliano di Puglia yesterday. As was widely expected, the final death toll in the earthquake tragedy that on Thursday morning struck the little rural village in the Molise region of southern Italy escalated dramatically when it emerged that 29 people, including 26 children aged three to 10, had lost their lives.
Even as the villagers were trying to come to terms with the devastation wreaked on their community when the village schoolhouse collapsed on Thursday morning, they found themselves caught up in further scenes of panic and distress yesterday afternoon when the village was struck by the first of four aftershock tremors, which prompted police to order an immediate evacuation.
Some 62 people, comprising 56 children, four teachers and two janitors, had been in the schoolhouse when an earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale struck the village on Thursday.
Even though the village dates from mediaeval times, only one building, the schoolhouse, built in 1954, collapsed as a result of the earthquake.
By yesterday afternoon, at the end of an immensely difficult rescue operation in which rescue workers had shifted most of the rubble by hand for fear of provoking a further collapse and endangering those trapped below, 35 children had been rescued.
Using sonar equipment and sniffer dogs and guided at first by the children's voices, rescue workers worked right through Thursday night and into yesterday afternoon.
The last child to be pulled alive from the rubble was eight-year-old Angelo, rescued at shortly before 4 p.m. yesterday morning.
Many of the children died sitting at their desks, probably crushed by the collapse of the school roof.
Those same desks, however, may have saved some of the 35 survivors, since the metal frames of the desks blocked the falling ceiling, creating a three-foot-high "cavern" in which the children could breathe.
Throughout Italy, yesterday's normally festive All Saints' Day was transformed into a day of national mourning as Pope John Paul II, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi all expressed their sense of dismay.
Speaking to the faithful during a heavy rainstorm in St Peter's Square, the Pope called for prayers for the victims and their families.
As the inevitable nationwide polemics on architectural shortcomings and local government negligence were beginning to gather steam yesterday, perhaps the most eloquent testimony on Thursday's tragedy came from a school teacher, Ms Clementine Simone, one of the survivors.
She told reporters: "I had just told the kids to sit down and be quiet when the floor just opened up under us. It all lasted just about three or four seconds, giving me the time to scream at the children, telling them to get under their desks. I was talking to the kids, telling them to be quiet, but some of the little ones didn't understand the seriousness of the situation, and they were asking me, 'Teacher, when we get out of here, will the bus still be waiting for us or will we have to walk home?'"