Floodlights are aiding rescuers sifting rubble for signs of life after the devastating Italian earthquake, while thousands face a night in shelters.

At least 150 people are dead, dozens missing, 1,500 injured and some 50,000 homeless after the pre-dawn quake struck L'Aquila and its region.

Emergency crews have reportedly pulled 60 people alive from the rubble.

Survivors are being housed in hotels or a tent city which has been erected in the medieval hill city.

Many houses have been reduced to piles of rubble, dotted with crushed cars.

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In one area of L'Aquila, rescuers tried to hush wails of grief as they pinpointed the screams of people trapped beneath debris, a Reuters correspondent reports.

In the village of Onna, population 350, the quake killed at least 24 people.

"There's a lot of people dead, there's a lot of people dead," said villager Valentina Brunetto.

"They're young people, young people dead under the house."

Weather breaks

The clear, sunny day which dawned amid the dust of shattered centuries-old buildings has given way to a night of rain, hampering the rescuers.

Brick dust turned to a white sludge but still exhausted emergency workers pulled away bricks and broken pieces of wood with their bare hands.

Heavy earth-moving machinery was available but rescuers preferred to work by hand, lessening the risk of further casualties under the ruined buildings.

At least 5,000 rescue workers are in the region and hospitals, Reuters reports, have appealed for help from doctors and nurses throughout Italy.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said the country has the resources to handle the disaster and he promised a field hospital, 2,000 tents and 4,000 hotel rooms, many of them on the Adriatic coast.

"We're hoping they give us a tent or something to sleep under tonight," Isenia Santilli, 70, told AFP news agency as she took shelter at a L'Aquila sports field where the Red Cross was feeding survivors.

Francesco Rocha, commissioner of the Italian Red Cross, put the number of homeless at about 50,000.

First priority for the agency, he said, was to save the lives of people still under the collapsed buildings.

"Second, is to organise the lives of the homeless. We are arranging field kitchens, beds and other items to organise their lives for the next days."

Shattered heritage

Between 3,000 and 10,000 buildings are thought to have been damaged in L'Aquila, making the 13th Century city of 70,000 uninhabitable for some time.

L'AQUILA

• Medieval city, founded in the 13th Century
• Capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region
• Population 70,000, with many thousands more tourists and foreign students
• Walled city with narrow streets, lined by Baroque and Renaissance buildings

Historic town in ruins

Parts of many of the ancient churches and castles in and around the city have collapsed.

L'Aquila is considered one of Italy's architectural treasures.

"The damage is more serious than we can imagine," Giuseppe Proietti, a culture ministry official in Rome, told the Associated Press.

"The historic centre of L'Aquila has been devastated."

Correspondents note that the very age of many of the country's buildings makes them particularly vulnerable to earthquake damage.

Italy lies on two fault lines and has been hit by powerful earthquakes in the past, mainly in the south of the country.

Much of the centre of L'Aquila had to be rebuilt after an earthquake in 1703.

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