Divers have found a woman's body in a submerged section of the grounded Costa
Concordia, raising the death toll in the cruise liner tragedy to at least 12.
Italian coast guard commander Cosimo Nicastro said the body, wearing a life jacket, was found in a narrow corridor near an evacuation staging point at the rear of the ship.
The body was taken to Giglio, the Tuscan island where the vessel hit a reef and ran
aground on January 14th. Twenty people are still missing.
The captain of the cruise ship, meanwhile, told magistrates he informed the ship's owners of the accident immediately, denying he had delayed raising the alarm, judicial sources said today.
Captain Francesco Schettino has been blamed for running the ship aground. He is under house arrest, accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated.
His statements to prosecutors investigating the disaster, reported in the Italian press and confirmed by judicial sources,underline the growing battle between him and Costa Cruise Lines which operates the 114,500 tonne vessel.
The liner, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio as dinner was being served. It is now precariously lying on its side on an undersea ledge, half-submerged and threatening to slide into deeper waters.
Diving crews resumed search operations today, but hopes of finding anyone alive have all but gone.Twenty-one people are still unaccounted for.
Prosecutors say Cpt Schettino steered the vessel within 150 metres of Giglio island to perform a manoeuvre known as a "salute" - a greeting to the islanders. He has admitted to coming too close to shore but has denied bearing sole responsibility, saying other factors may have been involved.
According to transcripts published by Italian media of his questioning by prosecutors, he said that immediately after hitting the rock he sent two of his officers to the engine room to check on the state of the vessel.As soon as he realised the scale of the damage, he called Roberto Ferrarini, director of operations for Costa Cruises.
"I told him: I've got myself into a mess, there was a contact with the seabed. I am telling you the truth, we passed under Giglio and there was an impact," Cpt Schettino said."I can't remember how many times I called him in the following hour and 15 minutes. In any case, I am certain that I informed Ferrarini about everything in real time," he said, adding he had asked the company to send tug boats and helicopters.
Costa Cruises chief executive Pier Luigi Foschi says Cpt Schettino delayed issuing the SOS and evacuation orders and gave false information to the company headquarters.
"Personally, I think he wasn't honest with us," Mr Foschi told Corriere della Sera yesterday.
He said the first phone conversation between Cpt Schettino and Ferrarini took place 20 minutes after the impact with the rock."That is too late," he said, adding the company had only realised the scale of the disaster when the evacuation order was issued, something prosecutors say happened more than one hour after the first conversation between Cpt Schettino and Mr Ferrarini.
"If the ship had been abandoned sooner, we would not have lost human lives," Mr Foschi said.
Costa is a unit of Carnival Corporation Costa has suspended Cpt Schettino and declared itself an injured party in the case. Documents from his hearing with a judge say he had shown "incredible carelessness" and a "total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency."
Reuters