Milan: An earthquake hit the tourist-packed Italian holiday island of Ischia on Monday night, killing at least two people, injuring dozens of others and trapping three young brothers in the rubble.
Tourists and residents on the island off the coast of Naples ran out onto the narrow streets after the quake wrecked a church and several buildings. Fearing aftershocks, many decided to leave the island early. Rescuers found a baby boy called Pasquale in the
wreckage and pulled him out alive in his nappy seven hours after the shock early on Tuesday. There was a hush followed by loud applause.
Fire crews found his brothers Mattia and Ciro, aged seven and 11, stuck under a bed nearby. They kept talking to them and fed water to them through a tube, then managed to pull Mattia free.
By noon on Tuesday, emergency crews said that they had freed Ciro's legs and were working to release him. "I promised them that after this was all over we would all go get a pizza together," one emergency worker said on Italian television. The parents were safe because they were in another room. About six buildings in the town of Casamicciola, including a church, collapsed in the quake, which hit at 8:57 pm on Monday. The walls of one were ripped open, exposing a kitchen with a table still set for dinner.
Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology put the magnitude of Monday's quake at 4.0, revising it up from an initial 3.6, but both the US Geological Survey and the European quake agency estimated the magnitude at 4.3.
The director of the island's hospital said that two women were killed and about 40 injured. One of victims was hit by falling masonry from the church of Santa Maria del Suffragio, the Civil Protection department said.