Divers searching the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship found eight bodies on Wednesday on one of the passenger decks, including that of a missing five-year-old Italian girl, authorities said.
Italy’s national civil protection agency, which is monitoring the operation off a Tuscan island, said four of the bodies had been recovered — those of a woman, a girl, a man and a person whose sex could not immediately be determined. Because of worsening weather, the divers were unable to immediately remove the other four bodies. That operation was set to resume yesterday if seas were calm.
The bodies were being transferred to a hospital on the mainland for identification, a process which could take days. Before Wednesday’s development, 15 people were listed as missing, but only one of them — Dayana Arlotti — was a child.
Dayana Arlotti was on the Mediterranean cruise with her Italian father and his girlfriend. The girlfriend survived, while the father, Williams Arlotti, was among the missing.
The death toll, which includes those missing — presumed dead — and bodies already recovered stands at 32.
Among the missing passengers are an elderly couple from Minnesota, Barbara and Gerald Heil, and Dayana Arlotti’s father. Others are from Germany and France. The one missing crew member is from India.
The father had a history of health problems and was said by the family to be traveling to celebrate a new lease on life — he had received a kidney and pancreas transplant. Some witnesses told media that they last saw him during the evacuation as he headed back to his cabin to retrieve lifesaving medication.
The Concordia, which was carrying about 4,200 passengers and crew, struck a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13, took on water and started listing badly until it lay on its side.
Giglio is a tiny island of fishermen and tourist hotels, famed for its pristine waters, coral reefs and a variety of marine life, including whales and dolphins.
Most of the victims were found on the capsized ship in the first two weeks after the accident. Three corpses were recovered from the water a few hours after the accident.
Officials coordinating search efforts said divers on Wednesday went into an area where survivors had told rescuers that some passengers had gathered to await evacuation. Many of the ship’s lifeboats could not be launched after the ship leaned heavily on one side.
Helicopters lowered the divers onto the above-water section of the Concordia.
They then scrambled down the side and swam through openings into the wreckage.
Diving search experts from France, Sweden and Britain have said they plan to meet with the Italian diving teams to lend assistance. Decomposing refuse and floating furniture inside the submerged ship have complicated their work.
In the first days after the accident, Dayana Arlotti’s mother had been quoted as saying she was holding out hope that her little girl somehow survived. After word came on Wednesday that the child’s body had been seen, she was reported to be heading to the hospital where the bodies were being taken.
“I can’t say if the mother was freed from a nightmare or not,” her lawyer, Davide Veschi, told Sky TG24 TV.
The Concordia struck the reef when it veered too close to the island while passengers were having dinner in the ship’s main dining hall.
The captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest at his home near Naples. He is being investigated for alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship while passengers and crew were still onboard.
He denies abandoning the vessel and contends the reef was not marked on navigational charts, although sailors say its location is well known and on tourist maps. Another of the ship’s officers is also under investigation.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS