We're finishing our live page coverage now.

Here's how things stand:

• The death toll from Wednesday morning's earthquake is now at 250
• The worst-affected towns are Amatrice, Accumoli, Arquata del Tronto and Pescara del Tronto
• Thousands of rescuers are searching through the rubble for signs of life but accept the probability of finding more survivors is low and diminishing
• Hundreds of aftershocks have shaken the area as rescuers worked
• Many buildings have been declared unsafe for habitation, leaving survivors homeless
• Relief missions have set up tent camps for people who have nowhere else to go

Survivors include a 10-year-old girl who was pulled from the rubble 17 hours after the earthquake.

The BBC's Damian Grammaticas, at the scene, says people freeze with every aftershock.

Before and after pictures show the extent of the devastation.

You can follow the story with the BBC on our website where we will bring you major updates.

Many people have been left homeless as their homes are no longer safe to live in.

Tent camps have been set up for them, complete with field hospitals.

This one is in Arquata del Tronto.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Italy's civil protection service now says the earthquake's death toll stands at 250 people, with 365 injured.

Buildings in Amatrice in Italy have crumbled in the earthquake that hit on Wednesday. Pictures of the damage continue to emerge. 

Image source, AP

Image source, AP

Image source, AP

Image source, AP

The English celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has announced on Instagram that some of his Jamie's Italian restaurants across the UK will sell a dish from the area affected by the earthquake for the rest of August, with £2 from each dish going to the International Red Cross relief effort. 

"I think we can easily make thousands and thousands of pounds to help," he wrote.

"Money will go to supporting firefighters in the set-up of tent camps for homeless and provision of food and clothing and medical assistance to people injured, old, kids, pregnant. 

"Every bit of help will count - big love to all and big love from me and my teams to our friends in Italy. We love you."

The Italian newspaper Il Giornale says millions of euros of government funds were set aside to earthquake-proof buildings, but the money was never spent, external.

The funds were intended to pay for the retrofitting of buildings according to anti-seismic guidelines, journalist Ivan French writes. But "Byzantine bureaucracy" kept them locked in public coffers.

The aftershock that hit Amatrice on Thursday afternoon has been caught on film.

The BBC's James Reynolds is in the town. He says there are fears that rescue workers may be caught up in the area hit.

Associated Press

Italian firefighters are escorting some earthquake survivors home so they can pick up their belongings, Associated Press reports. They may not be able to ever return to their homes and some have been sleeping in tents and in cars.

Paolo Brera is a photojournalist with La Repubblica. He spent yesterday and this morning in the badly hit village of Pescara del Tronto.

He told the BBC: "I saw a woman carrying her four-year-old son in a neck brace.

"Her two boys had been staying with their grandparents in the village while she and her husband stayed in Rome to work.

"They received a phone call in the middle of the night telling them about the earthquake so they drove down as fast as they could.

"The father went to the house and when he called for them he could hear the grandmother and the two boys calling. He managed to dig them out with the help of the search and rescue teams.

"The two boys were OK with some minor injuries. The grandmother also survived with a fracture but the grandfather was crushed and killed.

"Overnight, people stayed in a big camp on the edge of the village.

"There were perhaps 100 of them, some from the village itself, others who had come down to search for family members and people from surrounding areas who were too scared to sleep in their houses with all the tremors still going on."  

He said the area "is fully devastated", adding: "I have seen lots of people being taken from the rubble.

"I spoke to a fireman and he said it looks like Onna, which was the worst-hit area in the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. There is just so much destruction."

Image source, Paolo Brera

Image source, Paolo Brera

Image source, Paolo Brera

Image source, Paolo Brera

Reuters

More than 2,500 people working to rescue victims of the earthquake are volunteers, the Civil Protection Department has told the Reuters news agency.

"We dedicate all our free time to training, often to the detriment of our families. Many of us are divorced," said Paolo Cortelli, a member of the Alpine Rescue national service who is a veterinarian by profession and comes from the nearby city of Terni. 

It reports countries such as Germany, France and Israel all offered to send teams to support the disaster relief, but the Italian government "politely declined", saying its experienced emergency services and army of unpaid workers did not need any back-up.

The Italian Red Cross Youth tweets that more than 420 Red Cross workers are in the earthquake-affected towns in central Italy.

The tweet links to a press release saying the workers include medical and logistics staff, dog units, specialist rescuers and psychological support staff.

Rita Rosine, 63, told the AFP news agency her 75-year-old sister was trapped under the ruins of a collapsed house, presumed dead. 

"The situation is worse than in war. It's awful," she said.

"They say it will take two days to dig her out because they have to shore up the surrounding buildings. She didn't deserve to die like that, she was so good." 

The accommodation-sharing website Airbnb has waived service charges, external for people who need urgent accommodation after the earthquake in central Italy. It has also offered an option for people to list their spare rooms for free.

Image source, Airbnb

Italian fire officers are using their bare hands to search through finer parts of the rubble.

Image source, AP

Image source, Reuters

Rescue teams searching for earthquake survivors trapped in central Italy have asked locals to unlock their wi-fi passwords.

An aftershock that hit Amatrice in central Italy this afternoon had a preliminary magnitude of 4.3.

The Associated Press news agency says one building partially collapsed in the aftershock and it caused panic in the town, which suffered the heaviest death toll of Wednesday's earthquake.

Fire official, Lorenzo Botti, has said his teams "need to believe there's someone out there alive", as the search for survivors continues.

BBC Outside Source

Rescue co-ordinator Giovanni Coviello has spoken to the BBC's Outside Source programme on the World Service. He says there is still a chance people are alive under the rubble but the search will end this evening as the likelihood of finding survivors dwindles.

For now, he says: "We are very very tired, but we must go on."