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Owners blame captain for cruise ship disaster

Other News Materials 16 January 2012 22:02 (UTC +04:00)

The owners of the sinking Costa Concordia cruise liner Monday blamed its captain for the tragedy, which has left six confirmed dead so far, as hopes of finding any missing people still alive faded amid worsening weather conditions, DPA reported.

"The captain made a choice, of his own free will, that violates our code of conduct," said Costa Crociere chief Pierluigi Foschi.

"We dissociate (ourselves) from the conduct of the captain, who caused the accident by deviating the ship from its official route," he added.

Foschi's comments appeared to reinforce suspicions that the 52-year-old captain, Francesco Schettino, steered the vessel dangerously close to the island of Giglio to salute tourists gathered by the water.

Daily La Repubblica published a message posted on Facebook by Patrizia Tivoli, the sister of a dining room attendant on board the ship, announcing that the ship would pass "very close" to Giglio, shortly before disaster struck.

Schettino, who has been apprehended and now faces possible charges of multiple manslaughter and causing a disaster, has claimed that the rock that tore through the ship's hull was not marked on his nautical charts.

But prosecutors deny such a claim, and charts obtained by dpa from the Italian navy show several small rocks clearly marked around a larger group of rocks known as Le Scole.

The Costa Concordia ran aground and partially capsized late Friday some 150 metres off Giglio, a tiny island off the coast of Tuscany, in the Mediterranean Sea.

Foschi said the disaster had caused his company direct damages worth 93 million dollars, but that the company's financial position remained "solid."

However, shares in Carnival PLC, which operates the Costa Concordia, plunged on the London stock exchange amid concerns that overall costs could turn out to be much higher.

Meanwhile, rescue operations were called off for the day after being suspended temporarily around lunchtime as a result of the ship shifting about 9 centimetres because of rough waters.

"The decision was taken to safeguard the rescuers, given that the ship's movements could be dangerous for them," Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy's firefighters, told dpa.

Overnight to Monday, the body of a male passenger was found on the second bridge of the sinking ship, raising the official death toll to six, officials said.

A further 70 people were injured while 16 were still unaccounted for by late Monday, according to Italian media reports. These include 10 tourists, of whom one is believed to be a 5-year-old girl.

There were contradictory accounts about the nationalities of the missing, however, with Italian media saying at least four of them were Italians and police in Germany saying they had received missing person complaints from relatives who say they had not heard from 12 Germans since the disaster.

The chief of the German arm of the Costa Crociere company, Heiko Jensen, later said in Hamburg that some of the 566 German passengers who had initially been listed as unaccounted for had in fact left the ship and driven home without first informing the authorities.

Hopes of still finding people alive aboard the ship, meanwhile, were fading fast.

"The hope of finding the missing alive has now been reduced to a minimum," Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli was quoted as saying in the online edition of daily Corriere della Sera.

Cari, the firefighters' spokesman, said he could "not say" what chances existed of still finding people trapped alive inside the vessel.

Efforts were also being made to empty the ship of some 2,300 tons of fuel. The ship is stranded in shallow waters and resting on three rocks. Should it move much further, there are concerns that it might sink deeper and release diesel in an environmentally rich stretch of the Mediterranean sea.

"We have no news of leakages nor traces of pollution, but we are worried about the worsening of the weather conditions," Foschi said.

The Costa Crociere chief executive said experts would first have to close all leaks before the ship will be moved with the use of air balloons. However, Foschi did not rule out the possibility that the 290-metre-long vessel might have to be cut up in pieces.

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