Coast guard divers searching the submerged part of the Costa Concordia overnight found the bodies of two elderly people still in their life jackets, authorities said, raising to five the death toll after the luxury cruise liner ran aground and tipped over off the Tuscan coast.

Divers scouring the bowels of the ship in the murky, cold sea 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.

Another coast guard official has said the captain of the luxury cruise liner was spotted on land while the evacuation was still continuing.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said officers 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.

Paolillo told The Associated Press "we did our duty'' to remind Francesco Schettino of his obligation.

Meanwhile a risky practice by cruise ships of close-passing Giglio in a foghorn-blasting salute to the local population is being put forward as a possible factor in the disaster.

Some witnesses said the ship was indulging the local population with a spectacular parade past the island in what is known locally as an "inchino'' or reverent bow, with its upper decks ablaze with light as many of the passengers sat down to dinner.

The discovery of the two bodies overnight reduced to 15 the number of people still unaccounted for after an Italian who worked in cabin service was pulled from the wreckage Sunday and a South Korean couple on their honeymoon were rescued late Saturday 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 captain Schettino 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.

Risky pass-by move put forward as possible cause

Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola, a former Italian navy admiral, blamed "gross human error'' for the disaster in comments to Rai3 television.

"Ships of such dimensions cannot sail so close to a coastline where one knows there are rocks,'' the minister said.

Adding weight to the "inchino" parade past theory, the newspaper La Stampa on Sunday published a letter dated last August in which Giglio's mayor Sergio Ortelli thanked the Concordia's captain for the "incredible spectacle'' of a previous close pass.

The mayor told journalists on the island on Saturday that the normal route for cruise ships heading north from the port of Civitavecchia near Rome takes them to within three to five kilometres of Giglio.

"Many of them pass close to Giglio to salute the local population with blasts from their sirens.''

"It's a very nice show to see, the ship all lit up when you see it from the land. This time round it went wrong,'' said the mayor.

On Sunday however, Ortelli denied that it was a regular practice to come so close to the island.

"It's not the practice, or in any way a programmed salute but always in safe conditions,'' he said.

Ortelli said some skippers of Costa cruise liners liked to "pay tribute'' to former colleagues who have retired to the island but that this always occurred in "safe conditions''.

Francesco Verusio, the Tuscany region's chief prosecutor, said the ship's captain "should not have been sailing so close to the island'.

Chaotic and panicked evacuation

The ship's chaotic and panicked 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 Friday night, three bodies were found in the waters near the ship. The victims discovered Sunday 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 in one side, was already dangerous because of the risk the vessel could suddenly move and sink into waters over a nearby lower sea bed.

But, the divers' safety was increasingly threatened by floating objects in the belly of the 290-metre 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 huddle soon to see how long the underwater search could safely continue, he said.

Divers say they are using a kind of long cord they hook near the point of entrance and unroll as they work, so they can find their way out when finished.

Reports captain abandoned ship before all passengers safe

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

Asked Sunday by Sky TG24 about the accusations, Grosseto prosecutor Francesco Verusio replied, "unfortunately, I must confirm that circumstance."

A French couple who boarded the Concordia in Marseille, Ophelie Gondelle and David Du Pays of Marseille, told The Associated Press they saw the captain in a lifeboat, covered by a blanket, well before all the passengers were off the ship. They insisted on telling a reporter what they saw, so incensed that according to them the captain had abandoned the ship before everyone had been evacuated.

"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."

Rocks not marked - captain

Schettino has said the ship hit rocks that weren't marked on his nautical charts, and that he did all that 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."

But that clearly wasn't the case as the finding of the three survivors aboard Saturday night and Sunday showed.

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, Rossi, the regional president, said. No leaks have so far been reported.

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 out off 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.

Amateur footage taken aboard the ship showed the situation immediately after it ran aground, as an announcement in various languages tells passengers the liner is having electrical problems and "the situation is under control." When a man asks a crew member in Spanish why he is wearing a life vest, the crew member continues on his way.

Other video shows people crowded together in life jackets, apparently calm and waiting to disembark the ship. A third video taken from a lifeboat, shows mostly darkness as people shout and scream in panic.

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

Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the U.S.-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was cooperating with the investigation. Carnival Corp. issued a statement expressing sympathy that didn't address the allegations of delayed evacuation.

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

Islanders on Giglio opened up their homes and businesses to accommodate the sudden rush of survivors. Rossana Bafigi, who runs a newsstand, said she was really moved by the reaction of the passengers.

She showed a note left by one Italian family that said, "We want to repay you for the disturbance. Please call us, we took milk and biscuits for the children. Claudia."

At Mass on Sunday morning in Giglio's main church, which opened its doors to the evacuees Friday night, altar boys and girls brought up to the altar a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, a plastic tarp and some bread.

Don Lorenzo, the parish priest, told the faithful that he wanted to make this admittedly "different" offering to God as a memory of what had transpired.

He said each one carried powerful symbolic meaning for what happened on Friday night: the bread that multiplied to feed the survivors, the rope that pulled people to safety, the life vest and helmet that protected them, and the plastic tarp that kept cold bodies warm. "Our community, our island will never be the same," he told the few dozen islanders gathered for Mass.

-AP, AFP


By AFP and AP