World sends sympathy, offers aid

From Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, world leaders expressed their sympathy and queued up to pledge aid.

As the death toll rose and rescue teams searched for survivors.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the US embassy in Rome would provide €37,000 in emergency relief funding.

"Russia is shocked by this tragedy," Russian leader Medvedev said in a telegram to Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who cancelled a trip to Moscow to lend his support at the scene. "We sympathise with those who have suffered and share their sorrow."

Officials at the Vatican, 100 kilometres southwest of the heart of the earthquake zone, said Pope Benedict XVI sent his prayers to the victims in L'Aquila, the capital of the Abruzzo region.

Other condolences poured in, including from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was "saddened by the loss of life and destruction of property" and ready to extend help, his spokesman in New York said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy messaged Mr Berlusconi: "My thoughts are in particular with the injured, and with all those who have lost a loved one, to whom I ask you to pass on my most sad regards."

The EU, Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Israel and Russia all stepped forward with offers of aid, although Italian civil protection head Agostino Miozzo said that was not immediately needed.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso offered his "greatest solidarity and deepest sympathy," while Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, speaking on behalf of the Czech EU presidency, said: "We are monitoring Italy's needs and we are ready to react to them."

From London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "We stand ready to do what we can to help the Italian people at this difficult time."

Messages of sympathy also came from Serbia, Sweden, Portugal, Poland and Bulgaria. Both Bulgaria and Croatia offered to sent search-and-rescue teams, including sniffer dogs trained to find survivors buried under rubble.