Three more rescued as death toll hits five

AFP/Giglio Island, Italy

Rescuers on power rafts are seen next to the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off the west coast of Italy, at Giglio island

Two South Korean honeymooners and an Italian crewman were rescued yesterday from a cruise ship wreck in Italy but emergency services found another two bodies, bringing the death toll from the disaster to five.Rescuers were still hunting for more than a dozen people missing after the Costa Concordia luxury liner hit submerged rocks just off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday night with more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board.But they said the search in the half-submerged ship was highly dangerous because the decks were at almost a 90-degree angle and there was a risk that the ship could slip off the rocks it had struck and sink altogether.Fire crew chief Cosimo Pulito said rescuers had only searched a quarter of the ship so far, including most of the area above water and some underwater parts, but that it was unlikely there were any air pockets. “We will continue searching until we’ve done the whole ship.”Survivors from around the world – many with bloodshot eyes and draped in blankets in Giglio harbour – spoke on Saturday of scenes “like the Titanic” on board and said they were not properly informed about the evacuation.Some of them were in evening wear as they had just been settling down to dinner shortly after the start of their seven-day Mediterranean cruise when the accident happened.Luca Cari, a spokesman for the fire brigade, said the South Korean honeymooners had been evacuated by helicopter and were in “perfect condition”.“They were in their cabin, we still don’t understand why,” he added.The rescued Italian, an officer responsible for passenger security on the vessel, was found after emergency crews spent hours trying to reach him after hearing his voice echoing in the massive ship.“He was in the tea room. He shouted with joy when we got to him. He just thanked us,” Pulito said, adding that the man had suffered a broken leg.By late yesterday afternoon, the coastguard said divers had found the bodies of two elderly men wearing lifejackets in a cabin in the rear of the submerged part of the 17-deck ship.Two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member were earlier confirmed killed, apparently after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters with dozens of others in a chaotic evacuation.Enrico Rossi, governor of the Tuscany region, had earlier told reporters at the scene that there were still six crew members and 11 passengers missing.Rossi said that he wanted new rules in place to avoid ships coming so close to the shore along the picturesque Tuscan coast and its archipelago.“I want control systems in place along the shipping routes to avoid ships going off course,” he said, following reports that the cruise ship had been steaming past the island for show when the accident happened.Investigators arrested the ship’s captain on Saturday and were to begin analysing the “black box” recovered by rescuers, which logged all of the 291m long ship’s movements as well as conversations between personnel.The captain, Francesco Schettino, told Italian news channel TGCOM that the ship hit a rock that was not on the charts and that he had tried to save as many people as possible.First officer Ciro Ambrosio was also arrested, local prosecutors said.Italian media said the two face possible charges of multiple homicide and abandoning the ship before all the passengers were rescued.The captain “approached Giglio Island in a very awkward way, hit a rock that stuck into its left side, making (the boat) list and take on a huge amount of water in the space of two or three minutes”, a prosecutor told reporters.Island residents also said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit an underwater rocky reef that was well known to inhabitants of this hilly outcrop, which has a population of just 800.The Costa Concordia, which ran aground on Friday the 13th, was regarded as a cursed ship by superstitious Italian sailors, after the champagne bottle failed to smash when it was thrown against the hull for its christening ceremony.Rescuers said that they plucked 100 people from the sea overnight on Friday after some of the lifeboats on board failed to function or could not descend to the water from a ship that was already badly listing.About 60 people who had not managed to escape in lifeboats were rescued from the vessel itself, including one passenger with a broken leg.Some crew members familiar with the layout of the ship were helping divers negotiate their way around the Italian-built liner’s 1,500 cabins.Officials said all the survivors had been taken off the island on Saturday to nearby Porto Santo Stefano and then on to other parts of Italy or back home.The people on board included some 60 nationalities – nearly a third of the passengers were Italian, followed by Germans and French.Foreign diplomats privately expressed frustration over a lack of information about their citizens and on the handling of the ship’s evacuation.Around 60 people were injured, including two seriously – a woman with a blow to the head and a man struck in the spine, medical sources said. Most of those hospitalised had suffered broken limbs or had hypothermia.The disaster happened just hours after the ship had left the port of Civitavecchia near Rome at the start of a Mediterranean cruise that was meant to take it to Savona in northwest Italy and then on to Marseille and Barcelona.The Genoa-based owner of the ship, Costa Crociere, is Europe’s biggest cruise operator, with a turnover of 2.9bn euros ($3.7bn) in 2010.Skipper ‘skipped’ well before passengersThe captain of the Costa Concordia left the stricken cruise liner “well before” the last passengers were evacuated, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the disaster said yesterday.Asked on the news channel SkyTG24 whether captain Francesco Schettino, arrested on Saturday for multiple homicide, had left the liner “well before all the passengers were evacuated”, prosecutor Francesco Verusio replied: “Unfortunately I can confirm that.”The prosecutor also indicated that the ship “was not on the right course”, adding that the captain was on the bridge and “therefore responsible for operations”.He said the possible responsibility of other persons apart from the captain and his number two, Ciro Ambrosio, was also being investigated.Asked whether the crew were not prepared, Verusio said: “It was rather the system of command which did not function as it should have done.”Italian media reports have said the captain was on shore around 11.40pm (2240 GMT) on Friday while the last passengers were not evacuated until 0500 GMT on Saturday.Ennio Aquilino, in charge of the rescue operation, told AFP on Saturday: “The last person we took off the ship around 6am (0500 GMT) had a broken leg.”