Rome — Several people have died after a ski hotel was hit by a huge avalanche in earthquake-ravaged central Italy, local media reported on Thursday, quoting rescue services. “There are many dead,” Antonio Crocetta, the head of a group of Alpine police coordinating the rescue effort was quoted as saying after an advance party reached the hotel following a 10km cross-country trek on skis. Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said there had been about 30 guests and staff at the Hotel Rigopiano on the eastern lower slopes of the Gran Sasso mountain when the first of four powerful quakes hit the region on Wednesday morning. It said it could not immediately confirm any deaths out of respect for the families of the guests and staff. Antonio Di Marco, president of the province of Pescara, which includes the mountain village of Farindola where the hotel is located, said two people had been saved. “We don’t know yet how many people are unaccounted for or dead,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “What...
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