© AFP Andreas Solaro Amatrice (Italy) (AFP) - Italy prepared for an emotional day of mourning Saturday with flags across the country to fly at half mast in honour of the 281 victims of a devastating earthquake. Grieving families began burying their dead Friday as rescue workers combing the rubble said they had found no new survivors in the remote mountain villages in central Italy blitzed by Wednesday's powerful pre-dawn quake. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and President Sergio Mattarella were set to attend a funeral service Saturday in the city of Ascoli-Piceno for some of the 46 people who died in the mountain villages of Arquata del Tronto and Pescara del Tronto. A local gymnasium has been transformed into a chapel, where bereaved relatives came to pray in front of thirty coffins, including a small, white casket for Giulia, nine, whose body protected her sister, Giorgia, five -- one of the last people to be pulled from the rubble alive in Pescara del Tronto.