Around 100 aftershocks hit overnight the areas of Marche and Umbria rocked by Wednesday's two big quakes, which left around 5,000 people homeless.
The scary seismic activity comes two months after the August 24 earthquake that took almost 300 lives and devastated several central Italian towns.
The strongest of the 100 aftershocks to take place after midnight was a 3.5-magnitude tremor at 4:13 near the badly hit town of Ussita, according to the National Institute of Geophysics (INGV). There have been almost 700 aftershocks in the provinces of Perugia and Macerata since Wednesday.
Schools are closed in many towns.
The government has set aside an initial allocation of 40 million euros for the new emergency on top of the money devoted to the August quake.
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