At least six people were killed and more than 50 others injured today in a 6.0-magnitude earthquake - one of the strongest earthquakes to shake northern Italy.
The quake toppled buildings and sent residents running into the streets, emergency services said.The first tremor struck at 4am and was measured at 6.0 on the Richter scale. It was followed by an aftershock of 5.1 around 12 hours later - watched by millions as it happened during a live news broadcast on Italian TV.
Thousands of people fled into the streets in their nightclothes following the first shock and emergency services quickly flooded into the area. Civil defense agency official Adriano Gumina described it as the worst quake to hit the region since the 1300s.
Four people killed were factory workers on the overnight shift when their buildings, in three separate locations, collapsed, defense agency chief Franco Gabrielli said.
Mr Gabrielli said: 'At the moment the main priority is those people who have had to leave their homes - we need to get them into temporary accommodation as quickly as possible.
'We will be asking for a state of emergency to be declared by the government.'
He also said, two women died - apparently of heart attacks that may have been sparked by fear. Sky TG24 TV reported one of them was about 100 years old. Pope Benedict XVI expressed his condolences with those affected by the earthquake asking God to 'have mercy on those that have died and ease the suffering of those that have been hurt.'
Two of the dead were workers at a ceramics factory in the town of Sant'Agostino di Ferrara. Their cavernous building turned into a pile of rubble, leaving twisted metal supports jutting out at odd angles and the roof mangled.
Fellow worker Stefano Zeni said: 'There is immense damage, but the worst part is we lost two people.'
Reports from Italy said one of the dead had worked the shift of an ill colleague. Elsewhere in the same town, another worker was found dead under factory rubble.
In the town of Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno, a worker also died after factory collapsed emergency workers were reported as saying.
Nearly 12 hours after the quake, the sharp aftershock alarmed the residents of Sant'Agostino di Ferrara and knocked off part of a wall of city hall. The building already had been pummeled by the pre-dawn quake, which left a gaping hole on one side of it.
The aftershock also knocked down the clock tower in the town of Finale Emilia, injuring a firefighter, with TV pictures showing the firefighter lying in the street near the rubble.
Videos posted on YouTube indicated that older buildings had suffered damage. Roofs collapsed, church towers showed cracks and the bricks of some stone walls tumbled into the street during the quake.
As dawn broke over the region, residents milled about the streets inspecting the damage. In Finale Emilia, elderly people took shelter after being evacuated to a sports centre.
Finale was also the scene of a amazing rescue when the alarm was raised for five year old Vittoria Vultaggio from the United States after a relative called emergency services in Rome as he could not get through to his family to find out how they were.
Firefighters dragged her from the crumbled wreck of her home and rushed to hospital where doctors said she was in a 'stable condition' but she was being kept under observation with her family who all survived keeping a vigil by her bedside.
Sites of artistic heritage across the region, which boast centuries old church towers, palazzos and castles, were also destroyed or seriously damaged in the quake.
Antonio Pasqua Recchia, director general of Italy's artistic heritage department said there had been 'severe damage over a wide area of the Emilia Romagna region with many, many structures affected.'
Officials from the Consorzio Grana Padana and Parmigiano which supervises the production of Parmesan cheese in the region said that at least 300,000 wheels of the famous cheese had been destroyed at a cost of more than 250 million euros.
The tremors were also felt as far as Venice in the north east and towards Milan in the north east.
The quake destroyed dozens of historic buildings - among them the famous 700 year old Torre dei Modense in Finale Emilia which was badly damaged in the initial tremor and then came down in the aftershock.
The town's mayor Fernando Ferioli was in tears as he told Italian TV: 'It's terrible - a thousand years of history gone in just a few seconds. We have suffered severe damage to parts of the town.'
In late January, a 5.4-magnitude quake shook northern Italy. Some office buildings in Milan were evacuated as a precaution and there were scattered reports of falling masonry and cracks in buildings.
In 2009, same thing repeated, a devastating tremor killed more than 300 people in the central city of L'Aquila.
...Below is the video of the incident
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