Unregistered passengers may add to cruise ship death toll

Unregistered passengers may have been aboard the cruise liner that capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio, a rescue official said yesterday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced.

Divers, meanwhile, pulled a woman’s body from the Costa Concordia yesterday, raising to 13 the number of people dead in the Jan 13 accident.

Civil protection official Francesca Maffini said the victim was wearing a life vest and was found in the rear of a submerged portion of the ship by a team of fire department divers.

Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue, told reporters relatives of a Hungarian woman have told Italian authorities that she had telephoned them from the ship and that they have not heard from her since the accident.

He said it was possible the woman’s body pulled from the wreckage by divers on Saturday might be that of the unregistered passenger.

But in addition to the body recovered yesterday, the body found on Saturday and those of three men found a few days earlier, have yet to be identified, because the corpses were badly decomposed after so much time in the water.

Gabrielli said they have identified the other eight bodies: four French, one Italian, a Hungarian, a German and a Spanish national.

Until yesterday, authorities had said 20 people are still missing. The search had been halted for several hours yesterday, after instrument readings indicated the ship has shifted on its precarious perch on a seabed just outside Giglio’s port. A few meters away, the sea bottom drops off suddenly, by some 65-100 feet, and if the ship should abruptly roll off its ledge, rescuers could be trapped inside.

When data indicated the vessel had stabilised again, rescuers returned to explore the above-water section and evacuation areas where survivors indicated people who did not make it to lifeboats could have remained.