Two more victims of last month's devastating earthquake in central Italy have died, bringing the death toll to 297, the national civil defence agency said on Friday in a statement.
The latest victims were from Amatrice and Arquata del Tronto, two mountainside towns that were flattened by the magnitude 6.2 quake that struck the central Apennines on 24 August.
Nearly 400 people were injured and several thousand left homeless by the temblor, whose epicentre was near Accumoli in the province of Rieti in northern Lazio, about 150 kilometres northeast of Rome.
Italian officials feared the death toll from the earthquake might top the 308 people killed in and around the central city of L'Aquila by a magnitude 5.8 tremor in 2009.
Prosecutors are probing why so many buildings in the quake zone collapsed and whether they were built according to the strict anti-seismic standards required by law.
The Apennine mountains in central Italy have the highest seismic hazard in Western Europe and strong earthquakes are common.
