Citizens' rights association Cittadinanzattiva on Thursday expressed ''extreme satisfaction'' after an appeals court found five people guilty in connection with a 2002 earthquake disaster in which an entire class of small school children died.

Twenty-six children aged 6-7 and their teacher were crushed to death on October 31, 2002 when a quake flattened their primary school in the southeast village of San Giuliano di Puglia in a tragedy which made international headlines.

The Campobasso court on Wednesday overturned a ruling in the case of five defendants - former San Giuliano di Puglia mayor Antonio Borrelli, two engineers and two construction businessmen - who had been found innocent in 2007.

The men were variously convicted of manslaughter, bodily harm and fraudulent misrepresentation.

Receiving jail sentences of between two years and 11 months and six years and ten months, they were also ordered to pay damages of 150,000 for every child that died and 100,000 for every child injured.

The original ruling of innocence for a sixth defendant, the owner of the company that built the school in 1958, was upheld.

Cittadinanzattiva, which brought a civil suit against the defendants, described the ruling as ''historic''.

''In addition to seeing the victims' families' call for justice satisfied, this is a historic sentence because the role of citizens and their organisations in safeguarding civil protection has finally been recognised,'' said the association's secretary-general, Teresa Petrangolini.

Under Italy's three-tier justice system, a sentence can be appealed twice before it is considered definitive.

Although the quake damaged most of the buildings in the village of 1,200 people, the only structure to completely collapse was the school.

The school was built in 1954 with state funds for the underdeveloped south. It was renovated and extended in 2001-2002, when extra classrooms were built on top of the existing structure.

Reinforced concrete was used to strengthen the ceiling of the old classrooms and to build a new roof.

The prosecution argued that the school had collapsed because it had been badly built and extension work on the building had violated safety norms.

But defence lawyers argued that the school had been felled solely by the violence of the quake.

Ex-mayor Borrelli's six-year-old daughter was among the children killed.