Andreas Solaro / AFP - Getty Images
The Costa Concordia ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of passengers as the ship began heavily listing.
By msnbc.com and news services
Updated at 7:21 a.m. ET: The captain in charge of the specialist divers searching the stricken Costa Concordia tells NBC News that they need to blow four more holes in it to gain access to the bottom of the cruise ship. Asked about the search for bodies -- some 23 people are unaccounted for according to Reuters -- the captain said there was visual evidence suggesting some bodies were at the bottom of the sea.
NBC News reported that the ship had sunk 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) at the front and 1 meter (3.2 feet) at the back, raising concerns that the vessel may break up in the middle.
Updated at 5:59 a.m. ET: Before suspending their search for missing -- at least 23 are unaccounted for Wednesday, according to Reuters, down from 29 -- divers in and around the capsized Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia faced difficult and dangerous conditions.
"The visibility is awful. Yesterday I couldn't see my hand in front of my face," Reuters quotes Giuseppe Minciotti, director of a school for cave divers in the northern city of Verona and part of the specialist team deployed on the wreck, as saying.
"I grabbed a piece of floating debris, and I couldn't see what it was until I had my head out of the water. It was a woman's shoe," he said.? "We're waiting today for new openings to be made, and we'll see if the visibility is any better in those points."
Coast guard spokesman Cosimo Nicastro said work would focus on an evacuation assembly area on the partially submerged fourth deck, where most of the 11 bodies found so far have been located.
"It's where we have already found seven of the bodies and it's where the passengers and crew gathered to abandon ship," said coast guard spokesman Cosimo Nicastro.
Story published at 4:50 a.m. ET: As hopes for finding 29 missing passengers faded on Wednesday, Italian divers suspended their search of the capsized cruise liner Costa Concordia after the vessel shifted on its resting place.
Fire services spokesman Luca Cari said the search was suspended at about 8 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) after a shift of a few inches, posing a potential threat to diving teams operating in the submerged spaces of the ship.
There was no word on when work might resume.?
The Costa Concordia had more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board when it slammed into a reef Friday off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio after Capt. Francesco Schettino made an unauthorized maneuver from the ship's programmed course ? allegedly to show off the luxury liner to the island's residents.
Jim Fee, a yacht skipper for three decades, discusses the potential ecological problems related to the Costa Concordia disaster. NBC's Harry Smith reports.
Rescue workers discovered five bodies on Tuesday, bringing the death toll of the Costa Concordia accident to 11.?
The adult bodies, believed to be passengers, were all wearing life jackets and were found in the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, according to Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro.
Schettino, whose actions during the disaster have come under intense scrutiny as details of his role on the night of the disaster emerge, appeared before a judge in Grosseto, Tuscany, where he was questioned for three hours.?
Schettino's lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, said urine and hair samples have been taken from Schettino, apparently to determine if he might have consumed alcohol or used drugs before the accident.
Martino Pellegrino, a crew-member on Costa Concordia, described Schettino as "authoritarian," "stubborn" and "egocentric," in an interview with Italian newspaper La Republica on Tuesday.
"Schettino likes to be in control of the ship's wheel," he told the newspaper.
Also on Tuesday, a transcript of a conversation between Schettino and Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno, showed the coast guard official urgently commanding the captain to return to the cruise ship after he had abandoned it.
During a heated conversation the Italian coast guard told the captain of the Costa Concordia to go back to the ship. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
"There are people trapped on board," De Falco said. "Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There is a pilot ladder. You will climb that ladder and go on board. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I'm recording this conversation, Cmdr. Schettino ..."
Msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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