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L'AQUILA, Italy - Hopes faded Wednesday of finding any more survivors from Italy's massive earthquake as the death toll rose to 260 and fresh aftershocks hampered the search for bodies.
"There aren't going to be any more people alive here," said Pedro Frutos, a Spanish search dog handler at the site of a collapsed apartment building in L'Aquila, the epicentre of Monday's quake.
"We're using our dogs to look for bodies," he added.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday that the search for survivors in the central Abruzzo region would continue for another 48 hours but the focus of the operation was now shifting to looking after survivors.
Speaking to reporters in L'Aquila on Wednesdsay, Berlusconi said that 260 people were now known to have died in the tragedy, including 16 children.
Officials said that 11 people were still unaccounted for following the 6.2-magnitude quake on Monday. Around 100 of the nearly 1,200 injured were said to be in a serious condition.
Berlusconi headed to the disaster zone for the third day in a row, having generally received high marks for his handling of the disaster despite reported shortages of tents.
Rescuers did manage to pull a young girl named Eleonora, still in her pyjamas, from beneath the debris of her home in L'Aquila on Tuesday night but no survivors were found on Wednesday.
Several strong aftershocks overnight added to the trauma and complicated the grim rescue task.
"As soon as there's another tremor... colleagues working in the rubble are risking their lives," the firefighters' coordinator Gennaro Tornatore told AFP.
According to the prime minister, civil protection services have set up 31 tent cities and 24 field kitchens and deployed 14 ambulatory medical units.
A total of 17,772 people are sheltering in 2,962 tents at the camps dotted around the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila, he added.
Although many have been housed in temporary shelter, at least 200 homeless survivors were unable to find shelter Tuesday night at one of the camps set up around L'Aquila.
"Shame on you!" one woman screamed. "Rai (television) says everything's under control, but we can't even get into the tents."
During a visit to a tent village on Tuesday, the gaffe-prone premier told German television "they should see it like a weekend of camping" and the billionaire leader was also quoted as promising beach holidays to the victims.
But despite the criticism in some quarters, Berlusconi has generally praise from the Italian media for his performance.
"He gives the sense that the state is present," said prominent author and editorialist Sergio Romano. "The left sees that even for its own image it's not a good idea to focus on the defects of the operation," he told AFP.
Some 7,000 police, soldiers and other emergency service personnel and volunteers are taking part in the earthquake operation.
"We're a bit tired," said Fabrizio Curcio, director of the Civil Protection emergency bureau. "But frankly, fatigue is not a major concern... We're running on adrenalin."
In a first estimate the government said some 1.3 billion euros (1.7 billion dollars) would be needed to repair or rebuild the some 10,000 buildings damaged in the quake.
The Roman Catholic diocese of L'Aquila said a mass funeral mass would take place on Friday to be celebrated by Archbishop Giuseppe Molinari along with a delegation from the Vatican.
Pope Benedict XVI said at his weekly audience Wednesday he "hoped as soon as possible" to visit the disaster zone, but a Vatican spokesman told AFP that such a visit would not take place within the next fortnight.
Safety concerns led to the cancellation of Easter masses at churches damaged by the quake. Prayers this Sunday will instead be held in the tent villages dotted around L'Aquila for the newly homeless.
The nearby villages of Onna, Villa Sant'Angelo and Borgo di Castelnuovo were practically wiped out by the quake, Italy's deadliest for three decades.
Italy lies atop two fault lines, making it one of Europe's most quake-prone regions, with some 20 million people at risk.
- AFP/ir
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