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Italian hotel death toll reaches 24, five still missing

Eleven guests and workers at the Hotel Rigopiano survived, while five people are still missing
Eleven guests and workers at the Hotel Rigopiano survived, while five people are still missing

The number of bodies recovered from the ruins of an Italian hotel buried by an avalanche has risen to 24, with another five people still unaccounted for, presumed dead, as a result of the disaster on 18 January.

Hotel Rigopiano was ripped from its foundations by the force of a wall snow hurtling down the hillside into which it was built.

Eleven people, including all four children at the hotel at the time, survived.

The avalanche followed the heaviest snowfall seen in the mountains of central Italy in decades.


It may have been triggered by a series of powerful earthquakes which rocked the region earlier the same day.

The combination of the extreme weather and the quakes has claimed at least 11 lives unrelated to the hotel disaster.

Six of them came in a helicopter crash at the Campo Felice ski resort yesterday.

Rescuers have vowed to continue combing through the wreckage of the Rigopiano but sub-zero overnight temperatures meant there was little hope of finding anyone else alive on what was the seventh day of the rescue effort.

The last survivors taken from the rubble were pulled out on Saturday after having been located on Friday morning.

They were all suffering from mild hypothermia.

A prosecutor is examining whether the disaster could have been avoided with better risk-assessment procedures.

But Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has warned against launching a hunt for scapegoats to assuage the grief of those who have lost loved ones.

"Every possible effort was made to reach the hotel," Mr Gentiloni told parliament.

"We are proud of the emergency services who were confronted with absolutely exceptional snowfalls and two of whom gave their lives," he added, in a reference to two mountain rescuers who died in the helicopter crash.