Teenage Girl And Her Grandfather Are Buried Alive By Landslide In Italian Village

A pensioner and his 16-year-old granddaughter have died after being buried alive by a landslide in an Italian village as storms batter the north of the country.

Giorgio Levati, 70, and his granddaughter Adriana De Pena Moya were trapped under mountains of rubble at the family's two storey villa in Cerro, near Lake Maggiore yesterday.

The house was partially buried in a 'sea of mud' after the rain-sodden hill behind the building gave way. The pensioner died under the rubble.

Rescue workers managed to drag Adriana from the rubble after more than four hours of digging but she died later in hospital.

Her parents and grandmother survived. The family's small, two-storey villa was the only property affected in Cerro, a hamlet on the outskirts of Laveno Mombello, a popular holiday spot.

A neighbour described how he had been awoken during the night by a huge bang 'like fireworks', and seeing rescue workers and the girl's parents 'digging with spades, even with their bare hands'.

'It was a horrific scene,' the neighbour told Italian television.

The tragedy means a total of 11 people have died in Italy in accidents related to the freak weather conditions in just over a month.

[Dailymail]