Reports say 6.6-magnitude quake felt over wide area including Rome and Naples and as far as Croatia and Slovenia

Prime minister Matteo Renzi swore that Italy would rebuild devastated towns and villages across central Italy that were rocked by a 6.6-magnitude earthquake on Sunday morning, saying the area represented the “soul of our country”.

It was the most powerful earthquake to hit Italy since 1980, striking a blow to the regions of Marche and Umbria just days after they were hit by two other earthquakes. It also frightened and displaced thousands of already-jittery residents who have seen the ancient structures and walls in their towns, including the San Benedetto basilica in Norcia, which is considered a sacred site, crumble into heaps on the street.

“We will rebuild everything — the houses, the churches, the shops. We are dealing with marvelous territories, territories of beauty,” Renzi said.

The epicentre of the latest earthquake was about 40 miles (68km) (40 miles) south-west of Perugia and close to the town of Norcia, which had also been hit by Wednesday night’s quakes.

There were no reported fatalities in the wake of the quake on Sunday, although it was even more powerful than the 2009 earthquake that hit L’Aquila, killing more than 300 people, and worse than the August earthquake that killed hundreds in Amatrice.

There were about a dozen injuries, with one person described as being in serious condition. Emergency services pulled three people from the rubble in Tolentino, a town in Marche. Main roads to the affected areas were closed, some impassable due to large boulders falling to the ground in the rocky, mountainous terrain.

“We’re safe,” Alberto Rendina, the owner of a bar in Norcia, told La Stampa.

“This morning, my wife was late opening the bar and was saved.” The family was at home but had been sleeping on the floor near the door, in preparation “for any eventuality”, Rendina said.



Residents in Visso, a town of 1,107 in Marche, told Sky TV that their homes “are no longer there”.



“The bedroom has collapsed into the living room,” one resident said.



A man looked stunned as he was asked question by a journalist on television and could barely answer as he fiddled with a crate holding his dog, which he put in the back of a pick up truck.

Regional officials in Marche warned that the earthquakes could lead to 100,000 residents being displaced.

Requests for some 5,000 beds have been made to hotels along the Adriatic coast. “But we think this number will rise,” Marco Manfredi, the chief of the Ancona unit for Confcommercio, the Italian business association, told La Stampa.

The earthquakes in August and earlier this week had already displaced about 14,000, said Paolo Bazzurro, professor of Hazard and Risk Assessment at the University Institute for Superior Studies (IUSS) in Pavia, but he said the number would rise.

“That there have not been any deaths is partly due to the fact that many houses were not inhabited after the quake on Wednesday. Also there were many that hadn’t been inspected yet, so people would not have received an order [to return home],” Bazzurro said.

“With the winter drawing in, housing people will be much more complicated,” he added, saying more aftershocks or other earthquakes could be expected in the next days and weeks.

While there was relative relief that the area was spared mass casualties, there were other losses that were devastating. Centuries-old structures, including the cathedral and basilica of San Benedetto in Norcia, a 14th century church that was built to honor the patron saint of Europe, Saint Benedict, was reduced to rubble, as was a tower and St Augustine church in Amatrice.



News of the basilica’s destruction was confirmed by Benedictine monks in Norcia who reported it on Twitter. In a statement on Sunday morning the monks said they were safe because they had temporarily moved their monastery after August’s earthquake in Amatrice, but that there were looking for victims who might possible require the sacrament of last rites, given to people close to death.

The statement, posted below an image of the ruined basilica, said: “May this image serve to illustrate the power of this earthquake, and the urgency we monks feel to seek out those who need the sacraments on this difficult day for Italy.”

The quake was strongly felt in Rome, where it temporarily shut the city’s metro lines to let officials check for damage, and some reported feeling tremors as far away as tremors in neighbouring countries Slovenia and Croatia.



St Paul’s Outside the Walls basilica was also temporarily shut after some plaster fell off the church but was later reopened. Vatican firefighters inspected St Peter’s basilica and other churches in the area.

On Sunday morning, live television images showed firefighters in Norcia’s main square helping people running down small alleyways seeking safety, including monks and nuns from a nearby monastery. Some then fell to their knees in prayer in the town’s main square.

Major destruction was also reported in other small towns.

“It all came down. Now there is no more town,” said Aleandro Petrucci, the mayor of the Marche town of Arquata del Tronto. There had already been “red zones” in place, abandoned after the previous quakes. “The few people who remained have gone out to the streets and are embracing. Now we’re going around to see what happened,” he said.



Cesare Spuri, the head of civil protection in Marche, said: “There are collapses everywhere. We report collapses in Muccia, Tolentino and in the areas surrounding Macerata. We’re trying to establish if people are underneath the rubble. There was also a strong shock in Ancona.”

“Everything’s collapsed. I see plumes of smoke, it’s a disaster,” said Marco Rinaldi, the mayor of Ussita, a town in the Marche that was among the worst hit in a 6.1-magnitude quake on Wednesday night.



In Rome, the strong tremors caused concern.

“I was woken up by the earthquake,” Gianpaolo Giovannelli, who lives in the Flaminio area of Rome, told the Guardian. “The apartment started to shake. We feel them here in Rome, but we never get used to them so each time we feel fear.”



Assia Staffoli, from Rome, said her husband put their six-year-old daughter under the table when they felt the earthquake, which caused their bedrooms, on a mezzanine level, to shake badly.



“That’s what you’re told to do when there’s an earthquake, go under the table,” Staffoli said. “I was feeding my son [aged seven months] when it happened. We then quickly left the apartment.”