Ship aground off Italy, bodies found

The Italian coast guard told the Associated Press early Saturday that at least three bodies have been retrieved from the sea after the the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground near the Tuscan island of Giglio. Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo told the AP there are "probably" at least three more dead, and said helicopters are evacuating some 50 people still aboard the 3,000-passsenger liner.


According to the London Telegraph, the passengers' dinner was interrupted by a loud boom around 8 pm local time. An initial announcement claimed the ship was suffering an electrical failure, and ordered everyone onboard to don life-jackets.


"It was just like something out of the Titanic," one woman said. "You could tell straight away that the ship had hit something and no way was it an electrical fault.'


A local mayor on Giglio said he was trying to find rooms to house the stranded passengers and crew overnight. The cruise ship had departed from the Civitavecchia port near Rome earlier on Friday with scheduled calls at Palermo, Cagliari, Palma, Barcelona and Marseille. The Italian news agency ANSA said the Concordia started to take on water and lean on the right side after running aground on Giglio's southern tip, in an area popular with divers and close to high cliffs.


ORIGINAL POST: More than 4,000 passengers and crew are being evacuated from a cruise ship off the coast of Italy in the wake of an accident, the AFP is reporting.


A statement from Costa Cruises, the company that runs the ship, confirmed that the evacuation of the 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew had begun, "but the position of the ship which is worsening is making more difficult the last part of the evacuation."


Costa Cruises' statement did not mention any casualties, and said it had not yet determined the cause of the problem.


ANSA news agency quoted unidentified rescuers as saying six people were dead. ANSA quoted journalists who happened to be passengers aboard as telling ANSA that the evacuees were being sheltered in schools, hotels and a church on the vacation island.


Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.


It said about 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.


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