Five-year-old girl among eight bodies found on Costa Concordia

A five-year-old girl was among eight bodies found inside the crippled Costa Concordia cruise ship.

Dayana Arlotti, from Rimini, whose father William Arlotti is also missing, is the youngest person who died in the disaster.

The grim discoveries came as prosecutors announced that they had widened their investigation to include four more of the ship’s officers and three employees of Costa Cruises, the Genoa-based company that owns the liner.

The bodies were found by Italian fire service divers on the fourth deck of the giant ship, which was at the start of a week-long cruise of the Mediterranean when it ran aground on Giglio island, off the coast of Tuscany, on Jan 13.

The first four bodies were found in the morning, with another four located in the flooded hull later in the day.

Aside from the little girl, rescue officials said the dead included a man and a woman. It was not known whether they were passengers or crew members.

The discovery of the bodies brought the confirmed death toll to 25, with at least seven people still missing.