Rescuers used mechanical diggers and their bare hands to search through the night on Tuesday for survivors of Italy's worst quake in three decades which killed nearly 180 people.

More than 24 hours after the quake shook the central Italian region of Abruzzo, emergency workers dug out two students early on Tuesday from collapsed buildings in L'Aquila, the medieval mountain city of 68,000 people worst hit by the disaster.

Rescuers have pulled some 100 people from the rubble but with other missing, civil protection officials said hopes were dimming of finding many more alive.

Early on Tuesday morning civil protection officials put the number of dead at 179. There were at least 34 people missing and 1,500 injured. They said the number of homeless was at least 17,000, far less that the some 50,000 estimated on Monday.

The quake, measuring between 5.8 and 6.3 on the Richter scale, struck shortly after 3:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) on Monday, catching residents in their sleep and flattening houses, ancient churches and other buildings in 26 cities and towns.

Aftershocks rattled the area, some 100 km (60 miles) east of Rome in the rugged Abruzzo region, well into the night as thousands of people sheltered in their cars and in tent camps.

"It is a serious disaster. Now we must rebuild and that will require huge sums of money," said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose government already faces a high deficit and huge public debt.

Berlusconi declared a national emergency and pledged to seek hundreds of million of euros in EU disaster funds.

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