Cruise disaster
January 15, 2012
Search and rescue efforts on the partially submerged Italian Costa Concordia cruise ship were set to continue late into the night on Sunday after the bodies of two elderly men were found onboard the luxury liner.
The total number of confirmed deaths now stands at five, with more than a dozen people still missing.
Divers reportedly found the men trapped at an assembly point near the dining area in the submerged part of the ship. News Agency ANSA reported that one victim was identified as Spanish and the other Italian.
"I'm afraid that we could find others," Angelo Scarpa, one of the divers who recovered the bodies, told news agency AFP. He added that divers were now focusing their attention on the dining rooms where many of the boats' passengers were eating when the boat hit rocks just off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday evening.
Fire crew chief Cosimo Pulito added that rescuers would continue searching until the whole ship had been covered.
Earlier Sunday, a crew member was rescued from the stricken vessel hours after a South Korean couple on their honeymoon was safely extracted from the ship's lower deck. Firefighters, combing the exposed portion of the ship, had heard their screams.
Three people were initially confirmed dead on Saturday, indentified as two French tourists and a Peruvian crew member.
'Captain left ship early'
The captain of the luxury liner, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on Saturday and is being investigated on a number of charges, including manslaughter. He has insisted, however, that the ship was not off course and that the rocks were not designated on his charts.
Many passengers complained that the crew did not provide good instructions on how to evacuate, and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many to be released.
Francesco Verusio, the state prosecutor charged with investigating the accident, said the captain left the stricken cruise ship "well before all the passengers were evacuated."
Investigators were also set to begin analyzing the "black box" recovered from the capsized vessel, which logged the movements of the 291-metre long ship as well as conversations between staff.
The ship was mainly carrying Italian tourists, but there were also many foreigners from Germany, Britain, France, Spain and the United States among the 4,200 passengers and crew.
Author: Charlotte Chelsom-Pill, Gregg Benzow (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)
Editor: Martin Kuebler