PENNE,ITALY: Rescuers pulled four more survivors from the ruins of an avalanche-hit Italian hotel on Saturday as hopes faded of finding 23 people still missing three days after the disaster struck.
Saturday's rescues lifted the total number of survivors to 11. But with no new signs of life detected, any trapped survivors were facing a fourth night under snow-covered rubble in the freezing mountains of central Italy.
Teams of mountain rescuers and firefighters had been boosted by Friday's dramatic rescue of all four children who were inside the Hotel Rigopiano, along with the mother of two of them.
Two men and two women were then pulled out alive in the early hours of Saturday.
But optimism receded over the course of a day in which emergency personnel had to battle atrocious conditions at 1,200-metres (3,900 feet) above sea level.
Enrica Centi, a spokeswoman for the mountain rescue teams involved in the operation, said heavy snow and poor visibility which grounded helicopters was hampering the effort.
"Those on site say they have heard signs of possible life but it may just have been bits of rubble collapsing, it's impossible to tell," she said.
Anxiously awaiting news
Among those missing was hotel kitchen staffer Luana Biferi, whose neighbour Antonio Lobolo went to the rescue coordination centre in Penne in search of news.
"Our hope is that she may have been in the kitchen when the avalanche hit because it has a thick external wall which may have protected her," the 42-year-old told AFP.
"She was supposed to have left the day before but stayed on for one more day. Our whole village is waiting anxiously for news."
Teams of firefighters and police are combing a debris-strewn area bigger than several football pitches as a result of the devastating force of the avalanche, which dragged the three-storey hotel some 10 metres (30 feet) from its foundations.
They were using scanning equipment to try and pick up signs of mobile phones.
But even when somebody is located, it can take many more hours to complete their extraction amid an ever-present risk of further masonry collapses or fresh snow slides.
Among the survivors were two men who were outside when the avalanche struck just before nightfall on Wednesday. Five bodies had been recovered by dusk on Saturday.
In a first official update on the numbers at the hotel when the avalanche struck, the prefecture in the nearest city, Pescara, said 23 people remained unaccounted for.
Psychologically exhausted
Earlier estimates put the number of missing between 11 and 20 with uncertainty over whether anyone not registered as a guest or staff member had been in the hotel.
The children likely survived because they were in or around a games room which did not cave in.
Two of them, both boys around nine, face losing their parents.
"They are physically fine, they suffered only mild hypothermia but psychologically they have been through an ordeal," said Tullio Spino, a doctor who treated them in Pescara.
The other two children were from the same family of four, all of whom emerged unscathed after an extraordinary sequence of events.
The father, Giampiero Parete, escaped because he had gone out to the car to get some pills for his wife just before the avalanche struck.
It was him who raised the alarm and he was inconsolable for 36 hours before learning his wife Adriana and children, Gianfilippo and Ludovica, had been found.
Adriana and Gianfilippo were safely extracted at midday Friday but the family had to endure another agonising wait before Ludovica, 6, was brought to safety at dusk.
The avalanche followed four earthquakes of more than five magnitude in the space of four hours earlier on Wednesday.
The death toll from the quake, not including the avalanche victims, rose to five on Saturday.
Some 33,000 homes were still without power and more than 8,000 troops and emergency services were deployed to help the affected region.