Penne: Italian rescuers on Friday rescued a mother and son and located eight other survivors in the ruins of a mountain hotel, two days after it was buried under an avalanche.
After a day of conflicting updates from the different services involved in the rescue effort, firefighters spokesman Luca Cari confirmed that a total of ten survivors had been found by nightfall.
The mother and her son were guided out and taken to hospital by helicopter. The other eight were still under the rubble with at least one of them injured.
Two other survivors had been found yesterday and two bodies have been recovered so far, leaving at least 13 people unaccounted for.
The mother and son were among a group of six people found in an air pocket today morning.
They were identified as the wife and son of Giampiero Parete, one of the two survivors found sheltering in a car outside the hotel yesterday.
Parete, a chef, had gone to the car to get his wife's headache pills just before the avalanche struck. Their daughter was still missing today.
By late afternoon, the survivors had spent a full two days under the snow-covered rubble of the Hotel Rigopiano, a three-storey spa hotel on the eastern lower slopes of Monte Gran Sasso, the highest peak in central Italy.
Marco Bini, one of the officers who reached the first group of six survivors, said the rescue team had been alerted to their possible location when they detected smoke from fires they had lit to keep warm
He said six people had been found together in an air pocket, including the mother and child, who were later shown emerging from a vertical tunnel in the snow.
"They were all in reasonable health, if very cold. The fire will have been using up the oxygen so we were lucky to find them.
"Their faces said it all, it was like they had been reborn."
A video released by firefighters showed the Parete's son, thought to be seven, emerging into the air to cheers and friendly hair ruffles from firemen.
Bini said the rescue had raised hopes others would be found in similar air pockets.
"The snow will have prevented anyone inside from getting too cold, it isolates like an igloo," he said.
More than 25 people, including several children, were thought to have been in the hotel when it was hit by a massive wall of snow.
Revised estimates today suggested the total could have been as high as 34.
