The number of deaths from a fire that razed a ferry in the Adriatic rose to 12 yesterday, with 10 of the victims dying as a result of the blaze and two perishing in the rescue operation. Dozens of passengers are still unaccounted for.
It was unclear whether the missing passengers had drowned or otherwise died unnoticed or whether the ill-fated Norman Atlantic’s manifest lists were inaccurate.
Pending the resolution of the issue, the Italian navy kept searching for bodies around the stricken ferry, which remained in waters close to Albania hours after nightfall.
Photo: AFP
The navy yesterday said that two Albanian seamen died from injuries incurred in an accident during the rescue.
The merchant sailors were on a tugboat when cables attaching it to the stricken ferry snapped, the navy said without providing further details.
As survivors described a terrifying ordeal that could easily have claimed more lives, Italian Minister of Transport Maurizio Lupi confirmed that a total of 427 people had been winched to safety by helicopter in 24-hour rescue operation carried out in the teeth of an unusually fierce winter storm.
With the 10 confirmed dead, that left 41 people unaccounted for in comparison to the list of passengers and crew released by the ferry’s Greek operator on Sunday.
Lupi said it was unclear if the discrepancy was due to errors on the passenger list, no-shows at boarding or people getting off at a stopover on the Greek island of Igoumenitsa.
“It is up to the departure port to match up their list and the people [rescued],” Lupi said. “That is why we are continuing our [search] effort: We cannot know what the exact number was.”
Greek Minister of Shipping and the Aegean Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said that the list was “possibly inaccurate” and complained about poor communication with Italy.
“I strongly doubt that all the names on the list are real — we have two persons with the same name, who turned out to be one person,” Varvitsiotis told Mega TV.
None of the statements made by survivors have so far given any indication that as many as 40 passengers may have died, but there was a worrying indication of more bad news when an empty lifeboat washed up in Albania.
Ship captain Argilio Giacomazzi, 62, upheld maritime tradition by ensuring he was the last man off, handing over to Italian navy officers.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the