Stuff World :
As many as 30 people have been killed after an avalanche struck a small hotel in the mountains of central Italy following a series of earthquakes.
The avalanche hit on Thursday night (NZ time), and came after three strong earthquakes shook central Italy in the space of an hour the day before. It struck the same region that suffered a series of deadly quakes in 2016, further isolating towns that have been buried under more than a metre of snow for days.
It is understood some of the dead were found inside the Hotel Rigopiano in the town of Farindola on the Gran Sasso mountain in the central Abruzzo region. A series of earthquakes hit snow-covered central Italy on January 18. Mountain rescue teams reached the hotel by skis around 4am (local time), SKY TG24 reported. Video footage showed mountain rescue teams with shovels digging through a wall of snow, and at least one man being led through the cleared path. An ambulance was blocked several kilometres from the hotel, according to SKY.
People left homeless by the earlier quakes had been moved to hotels in the region, but it wasn’t immediately clear who was staying at Hotel Rigopiano, which is located in the Gran Sasso National Park.
On its website, Italian news agency Ansa quoted the head of a rescue squad that reached the hotel as saying “there are many dead.”
They also quoted rescuers as saying they had been calling out to survivors but no one responded.
Daily Express reported two survivors have been rescued as workers search for at least three people still missing.
