GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy - Two South Korean honeymooners and an Italian crewman were rescued Sunday from a cruise ship wreck in Italy but emergency services found another two bodies, bringing the death toll to five.
Divers found two elderly men wearing lifejackets in a cabin in the rear of the submerged part of the 17-deck Costa Concordia, said the coastguard.
"I'm afraid that we could find others," Angelo Scarpa, one of the divers who recovered the bodies, told AFP. They had had to break the glass roof over one of the ship's dining rooms to get to them, said Scarpa. One victim was wearing a chain and the other had a wallet, which would help with identification, he added.
The divers would now focus on the dining areas in the search for more bodies, he added, as many passengers were eating when the boat hit the rocks.
More than a dozen people are still missing after the luxury liner, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, hit rocks just off the Tuscan island of Giglio on the evening of Friday the 13th. Rescuers said the search in the half-submerged ship was highly dangerous because the decks were at almost a 90-degree angle and there was a risk the ship could slip off the rocks it had struck and sink altogether. But fire crew chief Cosimo Pulito said they would keep searching until the whole ship had been covered.
Two French passengers and one Peruvian crew member were confirmed as dead Saturday, apparently after jumping into the chilly Mediterranean waters with dozens of others in a chaotic evacuation.
But fire brigade spokesman Luca Cari said the rescued South Korean honeymooners had been evacuated by helicopter and were in "perfect condition". "They were in their cabin, we still don't understand why," he added. The rescued Italian, an officer responsible for passenger security on the vessel, was found after emergency crews spent hours trying to reach him after hearing his voice echoing in the massive ship. "He was in the tea room. He shouted with joy when we got to him. He just thanked us," Pulito said, adding that the man had suffered a broken leg.
Enrico Rossi, governor of the Tuscany region, had earlier told reporters at the scene that there were still six crew members and 11 passengers missing. Rossi said he wanted new rules in place to avoid ships coming so close to the shore along the picturesque Tuscan coast and its archipelago.
"I want control systems in place along the shipping routes to avoid ships going off course," he said, following reports that the cruise ship had been steaming past the island for show when the accident happened.
Investigators were to begin analysing the "black box" recovered by rescuers, which logged the 291-metre long ship's movements and conversations between personnel.
Local prosecutors announced Saturday evening that they had arrested captain Francesco Schettino and first officer Ciro Ambrosio.
Schettino had on Saturday told Italian news channel TGCOM that the ship hit a rock that was not on the charts and that he had tried to save as many people as possible.
But one Italian prosecutor said the captain "approached Giglio Island in a very awkward way, hit a rock that stuck into its left side, making (the boat) list and take on a huge amount of water in the space of two or three minutes". Island residents also said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit an underwater rocky reef well known to inhabitants of this hilly outcrop, which has a population of just 800.
Italian media said the two officers face possible charges of multiple homicide and abandoning the ship before all the passengers were rescued.
The Costa Concordia was regarded as a cursed ship by superstitious Italian sailors, after the champagne bottle failed to smash when it was thrown against the hull for its christening ceremony.
Two Americans on board, Brandon Warrick and his sister Amanda, told CNN television what happened after the lights went out on the boat.
"They said there were electrical problems but then that their technicians were sorting it out and we should be fine in no time," said Brandon.
Amanda spoke of the growing panic as passengers realised it was far more serious.
"Those were the most chaotic moments because everyone was pushing, shoving each other, trying to get on a life boat. It was chaos."
Rescuers said they plucked 100 people from the sea overnight Friday/Saturday after some of the lifeboats could not be lowered because of the steep angle at which the shop was leaning.
About 60 people who did not manage to find a lifeboat were rescued from the vessel itself, including one passenger with a broken leg.
Officials said all the survivors had been taken off the island on Saturday to nearby Porto Santo Stefano and then on to other parts of Italy or back home.
The people on board included some 60 nationalities -- nearly a third of the passengers were Italian, followed by Germans and French.
Foreign diplomats privately expressed frustration over a lack of information about their citizens and on the handling of the ship's evacuation.
Around 60 people were injured, including two seriously -- a woman with a blow to the head and a man struck in the spine, medical sources said. Most of those hospitalised had suffered broken limbs or had hypothermia.
The disaster happened just hours after the ship had left the port of Civitavecchia near Rome at the start of a Mediterranean cruise that was meant to take it to Savona in northwest Italy and then on to Marseille and Barcelona.
The Genoa-based owner of the ship, Costa Crociere, is Europe's biggest cruise operator, with a turnover of 2.9 billion euros ($3.7 billion) in 2010.