As searchers continued to probe the massive devastation wrought by the deadly Nepal earthquake, the foreign ministry said Tuesday that at least four Italians were dead and 10 Italians remained unaccounted for.
Earlier in the day, the official figure was 39 Italians in the country who had not yet been traced following Saturday's 7.8 magnitude quake in the mountainous country.
Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that the fact that the authorities had been unable to contact the 10 Italians "does not mean that they are missing" but instead were untraceable. The foreign ministry said that a "partial recovery" of telecommunications as well as continued rescue efforts helped officials contact more Italians who had been in the region at the time of the deadly quake.
The death toll had climbed to 5,057 people by Tuesday, reported The Times of India, and Nepal's Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has warned that could rise to 10,000 victims.
The national center for emergency operations in Nepal has said that almost 11,000 wounded have been reported. Observers said that the toll was likely to rise further. Among the dead were Italian cavers Gigliola Mancinelli and Oskar Piazza and trekkers Renzo Benedetti and Marco Pojer.
The Italian cabinet led by Premier Matteo Renzi on Tuesday declared a state of emergency, the formal step required for Italy to join in European Union measures to help Nepal.
That declaration allows the government to field its entire Civil Protection operational support and medical aid task force, officials say.
The United Nations said that at least eight million people have been affected by the earthquake and about 1.4 million people needed food aid.
Also on Tuesday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper cited the German embassy in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu as saying 150 German tourists were still missing.
Geological experts told The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom that the devastating earthquake has shifted the ground beneath Kathmandu three meters southward.
Mount Everest is still the same height, the experts said.
Many in Kathmandu continued to sleep out of doors rather than return to their shaken homes from fear of aftershocks and further destruction.
Those aftershocks as well as limited capacity at Kathmandu's airport reportedly has hampered the arrival of aircraft bringing aid to the region.
Local media reports also said that some 250 people were missing after an avalanche hit the village of Ghodatabela, near the epicentre of Saturday's earthquake in a popular trekking area.
Pope Francis approved the first tranche of aid worth $100,000 for victims of the quake, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum said.
The money will be sent to local Catholic church officials to distribute on the ground.
The Cor Unum (One Heart) council is part of the Curia of the Catholic Church.
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