Anxious relatives huddled on Wednesday by what was once a student residence in the earthquake-struck city of L'Aquila in central Italy, hoping against hope that their missing loved ones might still be alive.

Scores of rescue workers in dust masks and bright clothing sifted through the rubble, using dogs to search for bodies and a large crane to lift chunks of concrete and twisted metal as the sun beat down on the Apennine mountains.

After learning that one of the students had been found dead, Francesco Danese, a family friend shaking from grief made calls on his mobile phone repeating the same phrase over and over: "The worst has happened. She's dead."

Another man, the uncle of one of the students still missing under the debris, who declined to give his name, said: "Hope dies last. But what can you really hope for here? The building just fell into the ground."

Nearby some women slumped against each other, others clutched their heads.

A rescue worker came over to them and asked them to describe their loved ones or provide a photograph to identify a body that had been found ? one of the women dressed in black fainted and had to be helped away by relatives.

"We'll keep digging until we've found everyone ? dead or alive. We're going to do our job," said Luca Signorile, one of the rescue workers at another collapsed building in the centre where a body was recovered earlier Wednesday.

City center remained quiet

Firetrucks, ambulances and police cars crowded in the narrow streets near the excavation sites while the rest of the city centre remained eerily quiet, patrolled only by police guarding against looters.

As firemen dug at a third site, their foreman Leonardo Bruni said: "We're still looking. We're not using the excavators yet. The aftershocks are still going on. Then we'll start checking the buildings to see if they're habitable."

Firemen brought out piles of personal objects from the house, perched perilously on a hillside on the edge of L'Aquila. Headbands, sunglasses, clothes and mattresses were carried out as their painstaking work continued.

The earthquake struck early on Monday, devastating a swathe of this historic and picturesque region. So far 260 people including 16 children have been reported killed and tens of thousands have been left homeless.

Thousands of rescue workers have been mobilised including foreign experts like Pedro Frutos, a veteran of 11 earthquake zones around the world from Spain who sat resting with his sniffer dog near one of the sites.

"We're using our dogs to look for bodies. There aren't going to be any more people alive here," he said as he took off his red hard hat and wiped his brow.

"We're just finding the corpses," he added.