Italy Prepares to Mourn Quake Victims in Good Friday Ceremony

Dozens of wooden caskets containing some of the victims of Monday’s earthquake in Italy were being lined up Friday at a parade ground of a police training school in the city of l’Aquila, a few hours ahead of a planned state funeral. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was scheduled to attend the solemn ceremony over which the Vatican’s second highest official, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was set to preside. By Friday morning the death toll from the earthquake stood at 287, including at least 20 children.
Rescuers sifting through rubble in L’Aquila and other nearby, badly damaged towns, were set to continue their work until Easter Sunday in the hope of finding more survivors.
The task is being made even more dangerous by dozens of powerful aftershocks that have followed the main earthquake. Monday’s tremor registered around 6.2 on the Richter scale.
Some 17,000 people spent Thursday night housed in several tent camps set up by authorities as shelters mainly for residents of the worst hit areas including L’Aquila’s city centre and the towns of Onna and Paganica.
The government says that reconstruction costs will rise to 1.2 billion euros (1.6 billion dollars) and entire towns will have to be rebuilt.
Monday’s earthquake was the deadliest to hit Italy in almost 30 years.
In 1980 up to 3,000 people are estimated to have died in an earthquake in the southern Campania and Basilicata regions.