San Giuliano Di Puglia (Italy), Nov 03: Authorities working through seismic aftershocks made final preparations for a mass, outdoor funeral today for 29 victims of an earthquake - all but three of them children crushed when their school collapsed. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was to attend the service for the victims of Thursday's 5.4-magnitude tremor, which cut down a swathe of the younger generation in this village of 1,200 and forced the rest to evacuate to a tent city. Prosecutors arrived yesterday to investigate whether anyone was to blame for the school's collapse amid suggestions shoddy construction in a quake-prone area may have contributed to the toll. Investigating magistrates inspected the site yesterday and said they would look into whether manslaughter or negligence charges were warranted. While most buildings in the village sustained some damage, the school, originally built in 1953, was one of the few buildings that was completely destroyed.



"It's an anomalous situation, the collapse of an entire building," prosecutor Andrea Cataldi Tassone told reporters at the scene. "So we must determine if there is possible responsibility."



He and other prosecutors stressed that no one was under investigation and that there was no information yet pointing to anyone responsible.



Bureau Report