A Romanian family found out last week that the man they mourned and buried was not a member of their family, but an Italian who also died in the Italy earthquake in August.

Almost 300 people, including 11 Romanians, died after the August 24 earthquake in central Italy

The Romanian victims’ bodies were sent back to the country and buried here, but it seems that, in one of the cases, the Italian authorities sent the wrong body to Romania. Instead of a man of Romanian origins, who died in the earthquake together with his wife, the Italians sent an Italian citizen to Romania. The mix-up occurred because the Italian was in the same building as the Romanian couple.

“Due to an error that appeared in the process of identifying the bodies of the victims killed in the earthquake in central Italy, one of the dead bodies was assigned to one of the Romanian citizens who died in the earthquake in Amatrice, and transported to Romania on August 27, 2016, for burial,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement cited by local Mediafax.

The mistake was discovered last week when DNA tests showed that the Romanian citizen’s body was still in Italy. With the support of the Romanian Embassy in Rome, the Romanian’s remains have already been repatriated. However, the Italian citizen’s body needs to be exhumed first, and then taken back to Italy.

A 6.2-degree earthquake shook central Italy on August 24 and almost completely destroyed the historic town of Amatrice and several villages in the area. Almost 300 people were killed by the quake.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com