A powerful earthquake struck central Italy early Monday, killing at least 70 people, causing entire blocks of buildings to collapse as residents slept inside and leaving thousands of people homeless, officials said.

In the city of L’Aquila, near the epicenter of the quake, twisted steel supports, slabs of walls, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets and a gray dust carpeted sidewalks, cars and residents alike.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni put the death toll at 50 people, but officials on the scene said that was likely to rise as rescue crews continued clawing through the debris of fallen homes, searching for the dozens of people still unaccounted for.

CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reported that, according to official estimates, as many as 100,000 people may have been left homeless.

Pizzey, reporting from L’Aquila, said there were rumors coming from the surrounding area that mountainside villages had been completely ravaged by the tectonic shift. Some residents reported feeling the ground move up and down, instead of the horizontal motion usually felt in the area during a quake.

Parts of L’Aquila’s main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, forcing the wounded to be treated in the open air or taken elsewhere.

The main stadium in L’Aquila was being hastily convered into a temporary shelter, reports CBS News producer Anna Matranga.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hurried to the region Monday morning to witness the destruction first-hand.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude was 6.3, though Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics put the magnitude at 5.8.

The quake struck about 70 miles northeast of Rome at about 3:32 a.m. local time (9:32 p.m., Sunday, EDT), officials said. The Civil Protection Department said the epicenter was near the city of L’Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo region.

The quake was the latest in a series of jolts that struck the area over the past two days.=

(Source: CBS News)