At least three people have died after a luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160ft gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel.
Three bodies were recovered from the sea, said coastguard spokesman Francesco Paolillo. There were reports that three other people had died after the accident late Friday night near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, but those reports were not yet confirmed, he said.
Dozens were injured and up to 70 people remained unaccounted for after the 114,500-tonne Costa Concordia hit a sandbar as passengers sat down to dinner on Friday evening.
An Irish couple who were on board are safe and well, officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs said this afternoon.
The man and woman were the only Irish citizens it is aware of who were passengers on the Costa Concordia.
Those who were killed are thought to be two French nationals and a Peruvian crewman.
Helicopters plucked to safety some 50 people who were trapped on board after the liner listed so badly they couldn't launch lifeboats.
"We were having dinner aboard when we heard a loud noise, like that of the keel being dragged over something," passenger Luciano Castro, a journalist, told Italian state radio today.
The lights went out "and there were scenes of panic, glasses falling to the floor," Mr Castro said.
Another passenger on what was be an eight-day pleasure cruise around Mediterranean ports, Mara Parmegiani, also a journalist, told the Ansa news agency that "it was like a scene from the Titanic".
Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbour of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. She was wearing elegant dinner clothes and a large pair of hiking boots, which an islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape, along with her passport, credit cards and phone.
Ms Hammer (65) said she was eating her first course, an appetiser of squid, on her
first night aboard her first cruise, which was a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.
Suddenly, "we heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn't anything dangerous," she said.
The passengers were instructed to put on life jackets and take to the life rafts but, Ms Hammer said, they couldn't get into the boats, because the cruise liner was tilting so much the boats couldn't be lowered into the cold, night sea. The passengers were eventually rescued by one of several boats in the area that came to their aid.
Mr Castro said passengers told them that some people jumped into the sea to try to swim to safety on the reefs of nearby Giglio island, although he didn't see anybody do that. On land, though, he met a young crewman from Asia who told him he swam to the reefs.
As dawn neared, a painstaking search of the 950ft long ship's interior was being conducted to see if anyone might have been trapped inside, Mr Paolillo said. "No one is leaning out, shouting, calling that they need help, but until the inspection is completed, we won't know."
"There are some 2,000 cabins, and the ship isn't straight," he added, referring to the Concordia's dramatic more than 45-degree tilt on its right side. "I'll leave it to your imagination to understand how they (the rescuers) are working as they move through it."
Some Concordia crew members were still aboard to help the coast guard rescuers inspect "every millimetre" of the ship, he said.
Mr Paolillo said it wasn't known if the dead were passengers or crew, nor were the nationalities of the victims known. It wasn't clear how they died.
Some 30 people were reported injured, most of them suffering only bruises, but at least two people were reported to be in a grave condition.
Mr Paolillo said the Concordia was believed to have set sail with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members.
Some passengers, apparently in panic, had jumped off the boat into the sea, a Tuscany-based government official, Grosseto prefect Giuseppe Linardi, was quoted as saying. Authorities were trying to obtain a full passenger and crew list from Costa, so they could do a roll call to determine who might be missing.
The evacuees were taking refuge in schools, hotels, and a church on the tiny island of Giglio, a popular holiday island about 18 miles off Italy's central west coast. Those evacuated by helicopter were flown to Grosseto, while others, rescued by local ferries pressed into emergency service, took survivors to the port of Porto Santo Stefano on the nearby mainland.
Survivors far outnumbered Giglio's 1,500 residents, and island Mayor Sergio Ortelli issued an appeal for islanders - "anyone with a roof" to open their homes to shelter the evacuees.
Mr Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm went off about 10.30pm, about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia, en route to its first port of call, Savona, in north-western Italy.
The coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" - it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio - "ripping a gash 160ft across" on the left side of the ship, and started taking on water.
The cruise liner's captain then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier.
But after the ship started listing badly, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Mr Paolillo said.
Five helicopters, from the coast guard, navy and air force, were taking turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safely. A coast guard member was airlifted aboard the vessel to help people get aboard a small basket so they could be hoisted up to the helicopter, said Cosimo Nicastro, another coastguard official.
Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.
It said about 1,000 Italian passengers were on board, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.
The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, Ansa reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port's dock, and suffered damage but no one was injured.
AP