Costa Concordia disaster: Eight dead identified

Eight of the 12 people known to have died when the Costa Concordia cruise ship was wrecked last week have been identified, Italian officials say. Four of the victims were French, one was Italian, one Hungarian, one Spanish and one German, they added. Rescuers have resumed their search of parts of the ship above water, but choppy seas have prevented diving. At least 20 people are still missing. Officials say some people may have been on board without registering. The latest discovery was the body of a woman found on Saturday by divers on the fourth deck. The head of the Civil Protection Agency, Franco Gabrielli, said the woman had not been identified but may be a Hungarian who was not on the embarkation list. There could have been more "illegals" on board, he said, referring to people who had not registered to be on the ship. There were known to be 4,200 people on the cruise ship, which struck a rock in shallow waters on 13 January...

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Official: possibility of unregistered passengers

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced. Rescuers, meanwhile, resumed searching the above-water section of the Costa Concordia but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. "There could have been X persons who we don't know about who were inside, who were clandestine" passengers aboard the ship, Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue effort, told reporters at a briefing on the island of Giglio, where the ship, with 4,200 people aboard rammed a reef and sliced open its hull on Jan. 13 before turning over on its side. Gabrielli said that relatives of a Hungarian woman have told Italian authorities that she had...

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