DEATH TOLL FROM ITALY MUDSLIDE RISES TO SEVEN AS NEWBORN FOUND AMONG DEAD

Search teams have recovered seven dead, including a three-week-old infant and a pair of young siblings, buried in mud and debris that hurtled down a mountainside and through a densely populated port city on the resort island of Ischia, officials said Sunday.

The Naples prefect confirmed that five people remained missing, and feared buried under the debris of an enormous landslide that struck Casamicciola before dawn on Saturday. Its force collapsed buildings and pushed vehicles into the sea.

The other victims were identified as the infant boy’s parents, a five-year-old girl and her 11-yearold brother, a 31-year-old island resident and a Bulgarian tourist.

“Mud and water tend to fill every space,” Luca Cari, the spokesman for Italian firefighters, told RAI state TV. “Our teams are searching with hope, even if it is very difficult.”

“Our biggest hope is that people identified as missing have found refuge with relatives and friends and have not advised of their position,” he added.

The risks of landslides remained in the highest part of the town, near where heavy rainfall loosened a chunk of mountainside, requiring search teams to enter by foot, he said.

The Naples prefect, Claudio Palomba, said on Sunday that 30 homes had been inundated and more than 200 people had been displaced. Five people were injured.

The massive landslide before dawn on Saturday was triggered by exceptional rainfall, and sent a mass of mud and debris hurtling through the port of Casamicciola, collapsing buildings and sweeping vehicles into the sea.

One widely circulated video showed a man, covered with mud, clinging to a shutter, chestdeep in muddy water. Another family escaped a home on the mountainside that appeared Sunday to teeter over a precipice, the daily paper Corriere della Sera reported.

The island received 126 millimetres of rain in six hours, the heaviest rainfall in 20 years, according to officials. Experts said the disaster was exacerbated by building in areas of high risk on the mountainous island, which is also in an seismically active zone. Two people were killed in 2017 when a 4.0-magnitude quake struck Casamicciola and Lacco Ameno.