Divers searching the submerged wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship have found the remains of one of the two people still missing from the 2012 disaster.
The body, believed to be that of Russel Rebello was found inside the salvaged liner, near the third deck, representatives of Italy's Civil Protection said.
"Scuba divers have located the body of one of the missing victims inside the ship near the third deck," the Civil Protection said. "Some details have led us to believe it could be [the body] of Russel Rebello."
The Civil Protection said it has informed the Rebello's family.
Thirty-two people of 4,200 people on board died when the Concordia slammed into a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio and capsized on Jan. 13, 2012. The bodies of Rebello and an Italian woman, Maria Grazia Trecarichi, were not recovered.
Divers have been able to access areas of the ship that were previously off-limits following the massive operation to right it last month. Officials have said the priority was to locate the remaining two bodies.
Italian authorities also said two weeks ago that divers found what they thought were human remains on the ship's Deck 4. But they later determined that the remains were animal.
Rebello, a 33-year-old cruise waiter from India, was hailed a hero for saving lives before losing his own when the ship sank.
The married father-of-two had started working on the Costa Concordia just a few months before Captain Francesco Schettino's notorious tragic "salute" to the island.
Witnesses said that as Schettino abandoned ship, Rebello, a Mumbai native, stayed on to help other passengers to safety and even gave one his own lifejacket.
He was last seen as he made his way to a muster station at the restaurant at the back of the ship.
The other missing victim is Maria Grazia Trecarichi, who was on the cruiser to celebrate her 50th birthday with her 17-year-old daughter Stefania.
They had boarded different lifeboats because Trecarichi was cold and had gone below deck to fetch a jacket. Stefania survived.
The new discovery of remains comes about three weeks after engineers managed to rotate the ship back to vertical. Before that, the ship rested 20 months on its side, hindering a full examination.
Tuesday 8 October 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/remains-of-costa-concordia-missing-victim-found-believed-to-be-those-of-indian-waiter/2013/10/08/81a0fa28-300f-11e3-9ddd-bdd3022f66ee_story.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/08/world/europe/italy-costa-concordia-remains/
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