Hundreds of coffins went tumbling into the sea after a landslide in Italy caused a cliffside cemetery to collapse. Watch footage from the scene below:
Built more than 100 years ago, the Camogli cemetery near Genoa is located along an area of rocky cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea.
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But earlier this week the historic site was struck by a landslide, sending around 200 coffins down the cliff and crashing into the sea on Monday afternoon.
Francesco Olivari, the mayor of Camogli, said the collapse was an 'unimaginable catastrophe'.
Speaking to CNN on Monday, Olivari said: "This type of collapse that happened today is very hard to detect or to predict.
"This area is subject to this type of collapse - it's very fragile."
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Olivari added: "We were doing work on a portion of the rocky coast - it was close to the area that fell today.
"Some signs of fissures were seen. We decided to close the cemetery."
Images and video footage of the damage were shared on social media by Vigili del Fuocol, the official account of Italy's firefighting brigade.
According to Italy's National Council of Geologists, the landslide was likely caused by erosion of the cliff under the cemetery - which had become worse as storms battered the Ligurian coast in recent years.
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A press release said the collapse represented the 'enormous fragility' of structures in the Italian countryside.
Domenico Angelone, the secretary of the of the council, said in a statement that the landslide shows 'the lack of maintenance that we geologists have denounced for years'.
Angelone added that, despite their 'high social, moral and cultural values, cemeteries are often built in unstable places - and in recent years have suffered from a 'lack of attention'.
According to local Italian media, a total of 10 bodies had been recovered from the sea as of Tuesday - five of which have been identified.
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Officials said they will continue to work on recovering the coffins and corpses from the cemetery.
Topics: World News, News, Italy
