Kosamdi.com

An eerie silence descended inside the medieval city's ancient walls, where the ravages left by the temblor that killed at least 150 people and injured 1,500 others in the mountainous region were apparent everywhere, with stones, tiles and rubble littering the narrow streets.

Cars crushed by heavy debris, a fallen bell tower and a church whose frescoes were bared to the elements by the collapse of its dome completed a picture of devastation.

"You can't come this way, and don't take pictures, there are dead bodies down there," said a police officer at the entrance to an alley where several crumbled walls could be seen.

L'Aquila, about 60 miles northeast of Rome, is capital of the quake-prone Abruzzo region, which has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April, according to the Associated Press. The quake struck at 3:32 a.m. and was measured at magnitude 6.2, according to Italy's national geophysical institute, which added that more than a dozen aftershocks followed.