Italy's most powerful earthquake in 36 years dealt a new blow Sunday to the country's seismically vulnerable heart, sending terrified residents fleeing for the third time in nine weeks and flattening a revered six-century-old church.
The USGS said the quake was centred 68 km (42 miles) east southeast of Perugia. It was 108 km (67) deep.There were no immediate reports of injuries or death. Residents already rattled by a constant trembling of the earth rushed into piazzas and streets after being roused from bed by Sunday's 7:40 a.m. quake. Nuns rushed out of their church in Norcia as the clock tower appeared about to crumble.
A handout shakemap released by the US Geological Survey (USGS) shows the location of a 7.1 magnitude earthquake striking around 68km east-southeast of Perugia, Italy (EPA Photo)
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Center put the magnitude at 6.6 or 6.5 with an epicenter 132 kilometers northeast of Rome and 67 kilometers east of Perugia, near the epicenter of last week's temblors. The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.6.
The German Research Centre for Geosciences put the magnitude at 6.5 and said it had a depth of 10 kilometers, a relatively shallow quake near the surface but in the norm for the quake-prone Apennine Mountain region.
Fabrizio Curcio, head of the national civil protection agency, said around a dozen people had been injured but that there did not appear to have been any fatalities.
"We are checking, there are several people injured but for the moment we have had no reports of victims," Curcio said.
Norcia's 14th-century Basilica of Saint Benedict, built on the reputed birthplace of the Catholic saint, was reduced to rubble.
The church is looked after by an international community of Benedictine monks based in a local monastery which attracts some 50,000 pilgrims every year.
"It was like a bomb went off," the town's deputy mayor, Pierluigi Altavilla told Rai News 24.
"We are starting to despair. There are too many quakes now, we can't bear it anymore."
Visibly upset, some of the monks and other residents knelt in prayer before the ruins.
The basilica was inspected last week by experts from the ministry of culture and earmarked for structural repair work which could not be carried out.
Guiseppe Pezzanesi, mayor of Tolentino in the neighbouring Marche region, said the small town had "suffered our blackest day yet."
"The damage is irreparable. There are thousands of people in the streets, terrified, crying. Let's hope that is an end to it, the people are on their knees psychologically."
Much of Italy's land mass and some of its surrounding waters are prone to seismic activity with the highest risk concentrated along its mountainous central spine.
Italy straddles the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to seismic activity when they move.
In addition to the Amatrice disaster in August, just over 300 perished when a quake struck near the city of L'Aquila in 2009.
In 1980 tremors near Naples left 3,000 dead and an estimated 95,000 died in the 1908 Messina disaster, when a quake in the waters between mainland Italy and Sicily sent massive waves crashing into both coasts.
