State funeral set for Amatrice after quake survivors rebel

Speaking to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Piano proposed building temporary wooden homes near the three devastated towns in central Italy so traumatized people could stay near their roots.

He said the Italian mafia has infiltrated the construction industry since the 1980s after the Irpinia natural disaster that killed more than 2,400 people.

Relatives placed bouquets on the coffins and sat next to them quietly.

While Pope Francis has expressed his sympathy for the victims of Italy’s devastating quake, few may have realized the pontiff himself was shaken by the 6.2 magnitude temblor as he slept at his residence inside the walls of the Vatican. On Saturday rites were held for victims of the quake from the adjoining Marche region.

He also issued a veiled critique of the suspected shoddy construction of the buildings causing so numerous deaths and warned the rebuilding effort must not become a “looting” of state coffers.

But an outcry forced the government to rethink and the service will now be staged in a large tent on the outskirts of the town’s destroyed medieval centre.

The crowd erupted in applause – a common gesture at Italian funerals – when white balloons were released at the end of the service. “You couldn’t recognise their faces, so we had to understand who they were from their rings, their tattoos”, Aquilini said.

But he warned that the reconstruction effort must not become “a political fight or a looting of various forms”.

The families of many killed chose to have private funerals, but 37 were honoured in the tragic service this afternoon. The quake area has seen more than 2,500 aftershocks and faced logistical problems in bringing relatives and officials into a town with only one serviceable access road.

But grieving residents rebelled at plans to let them watch it on TV or be bussed to Rieti.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and President Sergio Mattarella attended an evening service on Tuesday in Amatrice to honor those who lost their lives in last week’s deadly natural disaster.

So far, 231 quake victims have been found in Amatrice and 11 more in nearby Accumoli. The bodies of at least 10 more people are still believed to be under rubble.

A number of foreigners were among the dead, including 11 Romanians and three Britons.

Some 8,000 to 10,000 Romanians were living in the area where the quake struck.

After an entire first-grade class and a teacher were killed in a 2002 quake in the southern town of San Giuliano di Puglia, Italian officials had pledged citizens that the safety of schools, hospitals and other critical public buildings would be guaranteed.