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Thousands homeless as magnitude 6.3 temblor topples churches, buildings

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L’AQUILA, Italy - A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings as residents slept early Monday, killing at least 91 people and trapping many more, officials said. Tens of thousands were homeless and at least 1,500 injured.

The earthquake’s epicenter was about 70 miles northeast of Rome near the medieval city of L’Aquila.

“A few houses have remained standing, but just a few,” Stefania Pezzopane, provincial president of L’Aquila, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The earthquake struck at 3:32 a.m. local time in a quake-prone Abruzzo region that has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April. The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday’s quake was magnitude 6.3, but Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8.

An Italian Cabinet minister, Elio Vito, told lawmakers that 91 deaths have been confirmed.

Officials said the death toll was likely to rise as rescue crews clawed through the debris of fallen homes.

L’Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said some 100,000 people were homeless. It was not clear if that estimate included surrounding towns. Some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed, officials said.

As aftershocks rumbled through, slabs of walls, twisted steel supports, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets and a gray dust carpeted sidewalks, cars and residents.

A resident standing by an apartment block that was reduced to the height of an adult said: “This building was four stories high.”

In another part of the city, residents tried to hush the wailing of grief to try to pinpoint the sound of a crying baby.

Students trapped
As ambulances screamed through the city, firefighters aided by dogs worked feverishly to reach people trapped in fallen buildings, including a student dormitory where half a dozen university students were believed still inside.

Outside the half-collapsed dorm, tearful young people huddled together, wrapped in blankets, some still in their slippers after being roused from sleep by the quake.

“We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down,” said student Luigi Alfonsi, 22. “I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me.”

In the historic center of the city, a wall of the 13th century Santa Maria di Collemaggio church collapsed and the bell tower of the Renaissance San Bernadino church also fell. The 16th castle housing the Abruzzo National Museum was damaged.

The town of Castelnuovo also appeared hard hit, with five confirmed dead there.

Another small town, Onno, was almost completely leveled. At least 10 people were killed, said a Reuters photographer who saw a mother and her infant daughter carried away in the same coffin.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds to deal with the disaster. He canceled a visit to Russia and planned to go to L’Aquila to deal with the crisis.

Residents and rescue workers hauled away debris from collapsed buildings by hand.

Firefighters pulled a woman covered in dust from the debris of her four-story home. Rescue crews demanded quiet as they listened for signs of life from other people believed still trapped inside.

Hospital at risk of collapse
Parts of L’Aquila’s main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, forcing the wounded to be treated in the open air or taken elsewhere.

Filippo Monteforte / AFP-Getty Images Rubble lies next to a destroyed building in L’Aquila, Italy.

Bloodied victims waited to be tended to in hospital hallways or outside in the hospital courtyard. Only two operating rooms were working. Civil protection crews were erecting a field hospital to deal with the influx of wounded.

On the city’s dusty streets, as aftershocks continued to rumble through, residents hugged one another, prayed quietly or frantically tried to call relatives. Residents covered in dust pushed carts full of clothes and blankets that they had hastily packed before fleeing their homes.

“We left as soon as we felt the first tremors,” said Antonio D’Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L’Aquila with a huge suitcase piled with clothes he had thrown together. “We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pajamas.”

Housing the homeless
Evacuees converged on an athletics field on the outskirts of L’Aquila where a makeshift tent camp was being set up. Civil protection officials distributed bread and water to people who lay on the grass next to heaps of their belongings.

“It’s a catastrophe and an immense shock,” said resident Renato Di Stefano, who was moving with his family to the camp as a precaution. “It’s struck in the heart of the city, we will never forget the pain.”

Video Deadly quake April 6: Dozens have been killed and houses, churches and other buildings have collapsed. NBC’s Dawna Friesen and Reuters’ Deepa Babington report. Today show

Agostino Miozzo, an official with the Civil Protection Department, said between 10,000 and 15,000 buildings were damaged. He said stadiums and sporting fields were being readied to house the homeless.

“This means that the we’ll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months,” Miozzo told Sky Italia. “Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight.”

L’Aquila lies in a valley surrounded by the Apennine mountains. It is the regional capital of the Abruzzo region, with about 70,000 inhabitants.

Residents of Rome, which is rarely hit by seismic activity, were woken by the quake, which rattled furniture and swayed lights in most of central Italy.

The last major quake to hit central Italy was a 5.4-magnitude temblor that struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.

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Weeks before the disaster, an Italian scientist had predicted a major quake around L’Aquila, based on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas.

Seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.

Civil Protection reassured locals at the end of March that tremors being felt were “absolutely normal” for a seismic area.

The quake was the latest and strongest in a series to hit the L’Aquila area on Sunday and Monday.

chuckfox2009 World Topickz

SEOUL, South Korea - The U.S. and its allies sought punishment Sunday for North Korea’s defiant launch of a rocket that apparently fizzled into the Pacific, holding an emergency U.N. meeting in response to the “provocative act” that some believe was a long-range missile test.

President Barack Obama called for a global response and condemned North Korea for threatening the peace and stability of nations “near and far.” Minutes after liftoff, Japan requested the emergency Security Council session in New York.

U.S. and South Korean officials claim the entire rocket, including whatever payload it carried, ended up in the ocean but many world leaders fear the launch indicates the capacity to fire a long-range missile. Pyongyang claims it launched an experimental communications satellite into orbit Sunday and that it’s transmitting data and patriotic songs.

“North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles,” Obama said in Prague. “It creates instability in their region, around the world. This provocation underscores the need for action, not just this afternoon in the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.”

Council members above all sought a unified response and did not expect to reach agreement on a new resolution, possibly with tighter or added sanctions, until later in the week, diplomats privy to the closed talks said.

While the rogue communist state has repeatedly been belligerent and threatening — as it was when it carried out an underground nuclear blast and tested ballistic missiles in recent years — Pyongyang showed increased savvy this time that may make severe punishment more complicated than ever.

World knew launch was coming
Unlike its previous provocations, the North notified the international community that the launch was coming and the route the rocket would take — although critics of North Korea leader Kim Jong Il claim he really was testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. territory.

Using a possible loophole in sanctions imposed after the 2006 nuclear test that barred the North from ballistic missile activity, the government claimed it was exercising its right to peaceful space development.

The U.S. said nuclear-armed North Korea clearly violated the resolution, but objections from Russia and China — the North’s closest ally — will almost certainly water down any strong response. Both have Security Council veto power.

Obviously today’s action by North Korea constitutes a clear violation,” said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “My government has called this a provocative act, and we have been in consultation today with our allies in the region and other partners on the Security Council … to work toward agreement on a strong collective action.”

Yukio Takasu, Japan’s ambassador to the U.N., called the launch “a clear crime” violating U.N. Security Council demands that posed a grave threat to his nation’s security. North Korea had warned that debris might fall off Japan’s northern coast when the rocket’s first stage fell away, so Tokyo positioned batteries of interceptor missiles on its coast and radar-equipped ships to monitor the launch. Nary a shot was necessary.

Sanctions have had little effect
Analysts say sanctions imposed after the North’s underground nuclear test in 2006 appear to have had little effect because implementation was left up to individual countries, some of which showed no will to impose them.

Kim is reportedly a big film buff, and his strategy appears to have borrowed heavily from the 1959 movie “The Mouse That Roared,” about a fictional poor country that declares war on the U.S., expecting to lose and get aid like the Marshall Plan that Washington used to help rebuild its World War II foes.

In a statement released just hours after the launch, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said North Korea had informed Moscow ahead of time, and Russian radars tracked it.

Russia urges “all states concerned to show restraint in judgments and action,” Nesterenko said.

One of world’s poorest countries
Despite its policy of “juche,” or “self-reliance,” communist North Korea is one of the world’s poorest countries, has few allies and is in desperate need of outside help. The money that flowed in unconditionally from neighboring South Korea for a decade dried up when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in 2008.

Pyongyang has little collateral, and for years has used its nuclear weapons program as its trump card, promising to abandon its atomic ambitions in exchange for aid and then dangling the nuclear threat when it doesn’t get its way.

It’s been an effective strategy so far, with previous missile launches drawing Washington to negotiations. The North also has reportedly been selling missile parts and technology to whoever has the cash to pay for it.

Kim wants food for his famished people, fuel and — perhaps most importantly — direct talks and relations with Washington.

Right now, the main contact is through six-nation talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its worrisome nuclear weapons program. But that means dealing with two neighbors that the North despises most, Japan and South Korea.

It probably isn’t a coincidence that the rocket was fired over Japan. North Korea had warned that debris might fall off Japan’s northern coast when the rocket’s first stage fell away, so Tokyo positioned batteries of interceptor missiles on its coast and radar-equipped ships off its northern seas to monitor the launch. Nary a shot was necessary.

‘We must deal with North Korea’
Obama warned the launch would further isolate the reclusive nation. But pragmatism calls for engagement, especially with efforts to get North Korea back to the negotiating table for the six-party talks.

“We must deal with North Korea as we find it, not as we would like it to be,” Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, said Friday. “I’ve long since suppressed my tendency toward frustration. What is required is patience and perseverance.”

Kim Keun-sik, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, said the launch would chill ties between Pyongyang and Washington, but likely not for long.

“Wouldn’t they eventually come to hold talks? There is no other way,” Kim said.

U.S. officials also are trying to obtain the release of two American journalists recently detained by the North along its border with China. Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, predicted they would be used as bargaining chips, with the North likely “to try to link them to the nuclear and missile talks.”

Iran, which also has a contentious relationship with the international community over its nuclear program and is believed to have cooperated extensively with North Korea on missile technology, defended the launch.

“North Korea, like any other country, has the right to enter space,” Iran’s state TV said in a commentary, adding that the “pressure on North Korea to give up its undisputable right” was “unfair and dishonest.”

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