30 killed as avalanche destroys Italian hotel

Penne, Italy, Jan. 19: A huge avalanche swallowed up a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy after a series of strong earthquakes rocked the area, burying up to 30 people under tonnes of snow and debris, officials said on Thursday.

Italian media said three bodies had been retrieved from the site. Rescue workers declined to comment on the reports, but said they had yet to find any sign of life.

The gabled peaks of parts of the roof and a row of windows were the only sections of the fourstorey Hotel Rigopiano still visible after the wall of snow smashed into the four-star spa resort early on Wednesday evening.

Authorities said 30 people had been in the building, including two children, but more than 20 hours later, only a couple of survivors had been found — two men who had been outside. “The hotel is completely destroyed. We have called out but we’ve heard no replies, no voices,” said Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine Rescue squad.

“We are digging and looking for people,” he said from the isolated location in the Gran Sasso mountain range in the central Abruzzo region.

Rescue workers entered what appeared to be a lobby decorated with oil paintings and plants, where a landslide had torn through a wall, television footage showed.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni called for national unity, saying Italy was caught in an “unprecedented vice” of earthquakes and heavy snows simultaneously.

Italian news reports say that some guests at a mountain hotel struck by an avalanche sent text messages to emergency numbers advising they were trapped inside.

“Help, we're dying of cold,” one couple wrote rescuers, according to the ANSA news agency.

— Agencies