The death toll in the Abruzzo earthquake reached 228 today after a night of frantic rescue work and a fresh tremor measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale, the Italian Prime Minister said.

The toll could rise further, with 15 people still unaccounted for, Silvio Berlusconi told a press conference in L'Aquila.

He praised the efforts of rescue workers, who have pulled 150 people alive from the rubble amid extremely dangerous conditions. Some damaged buildings collapsed when the new tremor hit at 11.25am today, the largest of 280 aftershocks felt in the city so far.

"There is one particular rescue operation that is very important for us – four young men in the halls of residence," said Mr Berlusconi, referring to the frantic efforts to rescue students from a collapsed university dormitory.

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I found a scene of devastation - a jewel of medieval Italy has collapsed

Richard Owen in L'Aquila

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This afternoon the several dozen emergency crews at the scene said that they had located the four students.

Sergio Basti, a firefighter, said that they were evacuating the area around the dormitory because they planned to begin "surgically" removing big chunks of the building in order to "lighten" it. Asked if the students were alive, Mr Basti said only that in his experience he had found people alive after 14 days.

After working through the night under powerful lamps, rescuers carried out the bodies of two trapped students this morning, although a dog was found alive during the night. Rescuers had to flee when the second earthquake struck, but returned to continue moving rubble.

A girl was brought out alive today from her home near the town hall, after rescuers worked for 24 hours with sniffer dogs and mechanical diggers. Her mother and sister were both dead and her father is unaccounted for under the rubble.

Two other girls were rescued overnight, emergency workers said. Marta Valente, 24, was reached at 2am by a group of cavers.

Each success sparked celebrations by relatives and rescuers, many of them volunteers. A fireman told how he pulled a boy alive from the mangled remains of his house after a day-long search.

"All we could see was his head sticking from the rubble, his entire body was buried. We kept digging, picking piece by piece of debris and we finally managed to get him out. When we did the fatigue was great but so was our joy," he said.

Another of those rescued today was Maria D’Antuono, 98, who said that she had spent 30 hours knitting as she waited to be freed from her ruined home.

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