More than 200 rescuers are still searching for a dozen missing people.
Italy's government declared a state of emergency on Sunday after a landslide on the southern island of Ischia killed at least one person and left a dozen missing. A wave of mud and debris hit the small town of Casamicciola Terme early Saturday morning, engulfing at least one house and sweeping cars down to the sea, local media and emergency services said. A first tranche of two million euros relief funds was released at the end of an emergency cabinet meeting which declared the state of emergency, said Minister for Civil Protection Nello Musumeci.
More than 200 rescuers are still searching for a dozen missing people, while hundreds of volunteers, and others, up to their knees in mud, are busy cleaning the streets of the town.
Wreckage of cars and buses crushed by the mudslide could be seen and boulders were scattered around as excavators sought to free up access to homes, cars and shops.
Rescuers had recovered the body of a 31-year-old woman, according to Italian news agency AGI.
"It's a situation that hurts us, if only for the people who disappeared under the mountain. Here it's an island and even if we don't really know everyone, it's almost that," Salvatore Lorini, 45, told AFP.
"The mountain came down, there was devastation of shops, cars, hotels and that was already happening nine years ago. Now I am cleaning my mother-in-law's shop," he said.
The landslide was caused by a lack of maintenance and prevention "because nature is nature, there was an earthquake, but a bit of prevention" could have saved lives, said Mr Lorini.
The peninsula, off Naples, is no stranger to states of emergency following earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or severe weather.
Casamicciola Terme, a spa resort of 8,000 inhabitants in winter on the lush island of Ischia, near Capri, was hit by an earthquake in 2017 that killed two people.
It was completely destroyed by a much more powerful earthquake at the end of the 19th century.
Around a dozen people were missing Saturday after heavy rains caused a landslide on the Italian island of Ischia, the interior minister said, but denied earlier reports that eight people were killed.
A wave of mud and debris swept down the hill in the small town of Casamicciola Terme in the early hours of the morning, engulfing at least one house and sweeping cars down to the sea, media reports and emergency services said.
Infrastructure minister and deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini was reported as saying that eight people had been confirmed dead, but his cabinet colleague later denied this.
“At the moment there are no confirmed deaths," interior minister Matteo Piantedosi said during a visit to emergency services helping coordinate the rescue.
He said the situation was evolving but was “very serious" and complicated, with 12 people missing, and people trapped under the mud.
Media reports had earlier put the missing at 13, but officials cautioned that, as poor weather conditions hampered the rescue effort, the exact picture was unclear.
One family with a newborn baby reported missing earlier were later found in hospital, a local authority official in Naples, Claudio Paloma, told the AGI news agency.
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