A strong earthquake brought down buildings in mountainous central Italy early on Wednesday, trapping residents and sending others fleeing into the streets. A preliminary count hours after the quake struck put the death toll at more than 10 people.
Here is a list of major earthquakes in Italy in the past century:
- January 13th, 1915: Some 32,600 are killed when an earthquake measuring 7.0 struck Avezzano in central Italy.
- July 27th, 1930: A quake measuring 6.5 strikes the region of Irpinia in southern Italy, killing around 1,400 people.
- May 6th, 1976: An earthquake measuring 6.5 rocks Friuli in Italy's northeastern corner, killing 976 people and leaving 70,000 others homeless.
- November 23rd, 1980: Some 2,735 people are killed and more than 7,500 injured in an earthquake measuring 6.5. The epicentre was at Eboli but damage was reported over a huge area towards Naples.
- December 13th, 1990: Earthquake centred in the sea off Sicily kills 13 people and injures 200.
- September 26th, 1997: Two earthquakes measuring 6.4 kill 11 people and cause serious damage to the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, damaging priceless Medieval frescoes.
- July 17th, 2001: Earthquake measuring 5.2 shakes the northern Italian region of Alto Adige, killing one woman.
- October 31st, 2002: An earthquake measuring 5.9 hits Campobasso, south-central Italy, killing 30 people, most of them children, in San Giuliano di Puglia.
- April 6th, 2009: A powerful earthquake strikes the Abruzzo area east of Rome. It kills more than 300 people and devastates the 13th century city of L'Aquila.
- May 29th, 2012: More than 16 people are killed and 350 injured in the second big earthquake to hit the area around Modena in northern Italy. An earlier quake nine days earlier killed nearly 10 people.
Reuters