Officials say they expect the death toll in the Italian earthquake to rise further as the search operation continues to find survivors.
At least 250 people have died and hundreds more have been injured following the devastating earthquake which struck central Italy yesterday.
Hundreds of aftershocks have shaken the area since the quake, which was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220km from the epicentre.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that communities devastated by the earthquake will be rebuilt.
He also said that efforts to protect Italy's buildings and infrastructure from natural disasters will be relaunched.
Speaking at the end of an emergency Cabinet meeting, Mr Renzi said: "We cannot forget that we have a moral commitment towards the men and women of these places."
"Reconstruction is the priority of out government and of our country," he said, adding that it was also vital to boost anti-seismic measures in one of the most earthquake –prone nations in the world.
Timeline: Deadly quakes in Italy
The Civil Protection department in Rome said a tally by local officials showed that 190 people were killed in Rieti province and 57 in the province of Ascoli Piceno.
Rescue teams worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble.
The 6.2 magnitude quake razed homes and buckled roads in a cluster of mountain communities 140km east of Rome.
Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a ten-year-old girl, pulling her out of the rubble alive, where she had lain for 17 hours in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.
Many other children were not so lucky. In the nearby village of Accumoli, a family of four, including two boys aged eight months and nine years, were buried when their house imploded.
A young girl is rescued from the rubble after the earthquake that devastated the Italian town of Amatricehttps://t.co/Sj42sG4dtv
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 25, 2016
This afternoon a violent aftershock with a 4.3 magnitude sent rescuers fleeing from debris and stones that fell from the severely damaged bell tower of the 15th century church of St Augustine in Amatrice.
The jolt, which struck fear and panic in survivors, detached the church's facade, leaving it leaning dangerously over the main street where rescuers worked.
Almost 200 of the victims died in Amatrice, which is famed for a local pasta dish and it is believed that a number of holidaymakers were in the town ahead of its 50th annual food festival this weekend.
It is unclear how many visitors were in the area on Wednesday, making it hard to track the number of deaths.
Five Romanians, one Spaniard, one Canadian and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.
Before and after images show devastation of Italian earthquakehttps://t.co/hjHZtirKOw
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 25, 2016
Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy's most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the quake.
Inhabitants of the four worst-hit small towns rise by as much as tenfold in the summer, and many of those killed or missing were visitors.
