A POWERFUL earthquake in central Italy reduced three towns to rubble yesterday, with reports that as many as 50 people were killed and hundreds injured as rescuers raced to dig out survivors.

    The toll was likely to rise as rescuers reached homes in more remote hamlets, where the scenes were apocalyptic “like Dante’s Inferno,” according to one witness.

    The quake struck in the early hours of the morning when most residents were asleep, razing homes and buckling roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km east of Rome.

    The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the treasury released 235 million euros (US$265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis canceled part of his general audience to pray for the victims.

    Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, voted last year as one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2-magnitude quake.

    Accumoli Mayor Stefano Petrucci said some 2,500 were left homeless in the local community, which is made up of 17 hamlets.

    Residents responding to wails muffled by tons of bricks and mortar sifted through the rubble with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs.

    The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

    The quake hit during the summer when the area, usually sparsely populated, hosts large numbers of holidaymakers.

    A spokeswoman for the civil protection department, Immacolata Postiglione, said the dead were in Amatrice, Accumoli and other villages including Pescara del Tronto and Arquata del Tronto. She put the initial death toll at 38, but said rescue teams had only just reached some stricken areas.

    The quake caused damage in three regions — Umbria, Lazio and Marche — and was felt as far away as the southern Italian port city of Naples.

    The U.S. Geological Survey, which measured the quake at 6.2 magnitude, said it struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia, while Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

    The damage was made more severe because the epicenter was at a relatively shallow 4 km below the surface of the earth. Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

    INGV reported 60 aftershocks in the four hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

    Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

    The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

    The most deadly since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

    Later yesterday, a strong earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale rocked Myanmar at 5:04:54 p.m. local time. The quake shook buildings and damaged electricity supply in many parts of the country. No immediate and detailed official report is available on quake casualties, except that one died in Pakkoku, which is yet to be confirmed.(SD-Agencies)