At least 13 people die after airliner crashes into sea

RESCUE teams were working yesterday to recover the bodies of as many as three people missing from a Tunisian airliner crash that killed at least 13 people.

Some of the 23 people who survived the plane’s ditching into the sea off Sicily spoke of their ordeal.

Thirteen bodies had been recovered by this afternoon. But the exact number of missing remained unclear.

Teams were searching by air and sea for the bodies of two or three more people believed to have died.

One official said they might be having difficulty finding them because they could be inside part of the plane that is still submerged.

Emergency crews also hadn’t found the flight data recorder, said Gaspare Prestifilippo, a division chief at the Palermo port.

Families, meanwhile, arrived to identify the dead, and some of the survivors described the crash and their rescue as they recovered in hospitals in Palermo.

“We were miraculously saved,” said Rosanna Di Cesare, 36, who said she clung to a floating suitcase for a half an hour before she was rescued by a motorboat. “Even if I lost everything, I lost nothing.”

The aircraft, an ATR-72 operated by Tuninter, an affiliate of Tunisiair, went down on Saturday, 16 kilometres off Sicily’s Cape Gallo on the island’s north coast.

The pilot, identified by Tuninter as Chafik Gharbi, had contacted Rome airport aviation officials at 3.24pm (2.24pm Irish time) reporting engine trouble and asked permission to make an emergency landing in Palermo.

Sixteen minutes later he told tower officials he was “ditching in the sea”, said Nicoletta Tommessile, a spokesperson for ENAV, Italy’s air safety agency. There were 39 people on board the plane - five crew and 34 passengers - said Palermo chief prosecutor Piero Grasso.

Tuninter director Tlili Mohamed Ali said that Gharbi, who had 25 years of experience, including ten years flying ATRs, ditched because the engine gave out before he could reach the airstrip. The pilot survived with serious injuries.

The flight had departed from Bari, Italy, for the Tunisian resort of Djerba, popular with Italian vacationers, and was about half full.

Of the 23 survivors, 16 were being cared for at the Civic Hospital, but none was in a life-threatening condition, said Dr Mario Re, head of the intensive care unit.

Overnight, authorities hauled the mangled fuselage out of the sea, at least one of its wings still attached.