Cruise victims had on life jackets

Coast guard divers searching the submerged part of the stricken cruise ship Costa Concordia today found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, authorities said.

The discovery raised the death toll to five after the luxury cruise liner ran aground and tipped over off the Tuscan coast.

Divers scouring the bowels of the ship discovered the bodies at the emergency gathering point near the restaurant where passengers were dining when the ship carrying more than 4,200 people hit a reef or rock near the island of Giglio, Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro said.

The discovery reduced to 15 the number of people still unaccounted for after an Italian who worked in cabin service was pulled from the wreckage earlier today and a South Korean couple on their honeymoon were rescued late last night in the unsubmerged part of the liner when a team of rescuers heard their screams.

“We are still searching” for any bodies, “but (also) in the hope that there might have been an air pocket” to allow the survival of others, Nicastro told Sky TG24 TV dockside.

Authorities are holding the Italian captain for investigation of suspected manslaughter and abandoning his ship among other possible charges. According to the Italian navigation code, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison. A coast guard official said officers exhorted Francesco Schettino to return to his ship as panicked passengers desperately fled the cruise liner.

The chaotic evacuation has added to the difficulty in tracking down survivors - with six of those unaccounted for crew members and the others passengers. Two of the unaccounted for passengers are American, the US Embassy in Rome said.

In the first hours after the accident late on Friday night, three bodies were found in the waters near the ship. The victims discovered today were two elderly men who were wearing life vests, said Coast Guard Cmdr Francesco Paolillo.

“The divers had to remove the life vests to get the bodies out,” he said, because they could have floated away. Their nationalities were not immediately released.

The divers’ search through the ship, which is lying on its side with a huge gash, was already dangerous because of the risk the vessel could suddenly move and sink into waters over a nearby lower sea bed.

Their safety was increasingly threatened by floating objects in the belly of the 1,000 foot long liner, as well as muck drastically reducing visibility, Nicastro said.

“There are tents, mattresses, other objects moving which can get tangled in the divers’ equipment,” Nicastro said. Officials were going to decide how long the underwater search could safely continue, he said.

Prosecutor Francesco Verusio confirmed reports that prosecutors are investigating allegations that Capt Schettino, abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had escaped.

Asked by Sky TG24 about the accusations, Verusio replied: “Unfortunately, I must confirm that circumstance.”

Paolillo said the captain was spotted on land during the evacuation. Officers had urged him to return to his ship and honour his duty to stay aboard until everyone else was safely off the vessel, but he ignored them, he said.

A French couple who boarded the Concordia in Marseille, Ophelie Gondelle and David Du Pays of Marseille, said they saw the captain in a lifeboat, covered by a blanket, well before all the passengers were off the ship.

“The commander left before and was on the dock before everyone was off,” said Gondelle, 28, a French military officer.

“Normally the commander should leave at the end,” said Du Pays, a police officer who said he helped an injured passenger to a rescue boat. “I did what I could.”

Capt Schettino has said the ship hit rocks that weren’t marked on his nautical charts, and that he did all he could to save lives.

“We were navigating approximately 300 metres from the rocks,” he told Mediaset television. “There shouldn’t have been such a rock.”

He insisted he didn’t leave the liner before all passengers were off, saying “we were the last ones to leave the ship.”

Coast guard spokesman Capt Filippo Marini told Sky Italia TV that Coast Guard divers have recovered the so-called “black box” with the recording of the navigational details from a compartment now under water.

A Dutch firm has been called in to help extract the fuel from the Concordia’s tanks before any leaks into the area’s pristine waters.

While ship owner Costa has insisted it was following the same route it takes every week between the Italian ports of Civitavecchia and Savona, residents on the island of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the Le Scole reefs and rocks that jut from Giglio’s eastern side.

The terrifying escape from the luxury liner, which was on a week-long Mediterranean cruise, was straight out of a scene from “Titanic.” Many passengers complained the crew didn’t give them good directions 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.

Several other passengers said crew members told passengers for 45 minutes that there was a simple “technical problem” that had caused the lights to go off.

Passengers said they had never participated in an evacuation drill, although one had been scheduled for Saturday. The cruise began on January 7.

Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the US-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was co-operating with the investigation.

Some 300 of the crew members were Filipinos and three of them were injured, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said.