'All collapsed, except mountains'

Inside a shady tent in the middle of quake-hit Amatrice, a little girl hunches over a table drawing a picture of the soaring mountains overlooking this small Italian town.

For her, the drawing showed the only thing that remained constant after Wednesday's earthquake which brought death and destruction a string of remote hilltop towns and villages in central Italy.

Not far from the morgue where families have been identifying their dead, a group of children are playing in a tent set up by Save the Children, using drawing as a way to express the trauma they have experienced.

"This little girl drew the mountains and she told us that they were the mountains of Amatrice, the most beautiful in the world," Save the Children spokeswoman Danilo Giannese told AFP.

"Then she said; 'Everything collapsed, except the mountains'."

That drawing had particularly affected those working for the NGO, which has set up a play area where children can recover some sense of the normalcy which has been lost through the traumatic events of recent days.

The idea is to create a space where children can be with their peers and express themselves through play and drawing, under the supervision of educators trained to handle emergency situations.

It also gives the parents some time to process their grief, to deal with pressing problems and start planning for the future, knowing their children are enjoying a bit of peace in a safe place, the charity says.

Though they play and even laugh, the children have been as badly affected by the disaster as the adults.

"These are children who have suffered shock: suddenly, they had to abandon their homes and since then, they have only seen destruction," explains Giannese.

Many of the local children were sent away to relatives or friends in the wake of Wednesday's deadly quake, in which nearly 300 people died, while others remain in hospital.

Although these ones have survived, the trauma is far from over.

Once the children's immediate needs are met, it will soon be time to think about the upcoming school year, which begins in mid-September in Italy.

But with the local school in ruins, the question is where.

"The authorities are studying different solutions, but it is likely that school will take place in the tents," said a staff.

"For children, going back to school will be very important because they can talk with each other and tell their story about what happened."