AFP, ASCOLI PICENO, Italy: Italy held a tear-drenched funeral Saturday for dozens of its earthquake victims as the country observed a day of mourning over a disaster that killed nearly 300 people.
President Sergio Mattarella, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and other leaders were among hundreds of mourners who sat solemnly behind 35 coffins in a sports hall in Ascoli Piceno.
The hall in the capital of the Marche region had been converted temporarily to a place of worship for the funeral of most of the people who perished in the villages of Arquata del Tronto
and Pescara del Tronto in the region’s mountainous interior. Hundreds more stood silently outside, the sombre proceedings of the mass relayed to them by loudspeakers.
Relatives of the dead sat alongside the flower-bedecked coffins, some draping themselves across them and sobbing inconsolably, three days after the deadly earthquake struck before dawn.