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Rescuers resume search as Costa Concordia stabilises

Divers resumed searches on Thursday to try to find survivors on or around the Costa Concordia shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany in Italy, after tests showed that the ship’s position had stabilised.

Reuters/Ciro de Luca
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Rescuers were forced to suspend their search on Wednesday after the vessel shifted, and emergency workers feared it could slip from its resting place on a rocky shelf and slide into deeper waters.

“We will use micro-explosives to create new ways of getting into the wrecked ship. Teams will go inside and look for survivors”, said a spokesperson for the coastguard, Filippo Marini.

Rescue work is difficult, the corridors of the ship are filled with water and parts of the vessel are obstructed by piles of furniture and carpet.

Meanwhile one of the bodies taken from the wreck on Tuesday has now been identified as that of a Hungarian musician who worked aboard the vessel.

Hungary’s Blikk newspaper said the musician, identified as Sandor Feher, had gone back onto the ship to retrieve his violin amid the chaos of the evacuation.

Another 20 passengers and crew are unaccounted for, many of their relatives are staying in hotels on the island of Giglio awaiting news.

Meanwhile the captain of the ship is now under house arrest, following a court ruling.

The judge said she did not think Captain Francesco Schettino posed a flight risk but she believed he might try to conceal evidence.

After questioning him at length on Tuesday, the judge said Schettino made no “serious attempt” to get back on board his ship “or even close to it”, after leaving during the evacuation.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reports that Schettino told prosecutors that he was at the helm when disaster struck, but later fell into the sea and could not get back on board.

One Italian newspaper described Schettino as “the most hated man in Italy”, but inhabitants of his village near the southern city of Naples have closed ranks around him.

They lashed out at photographers and cameramen who gathered outside his home, accusing them of being responsible for a “media lynching” of the captain who, they say “saved thousands of lives.”

Under Italian law, he will not be allowed to leave his home in Meta di Sorrento or communicate with anyone apart from his lawyer or very close family.

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