Costa Concordia Remains Found Weeks After Ship Pulled Upright
Officials at the site of the stranded Costa Concordia cruise ship revealed they have found more human remains off the Italian island of Giglio, the head of Italy's civil protection agency said on Wednesday.
"Other remains have also been found and are currently undergoing DNA tests," the agency's chief Franco Gabrielli told reporters on Wednesday. "We are waiting for the results of the analysis," he said.
The discovery comes a week after engineers were able to set the ship upright, which capsized when it hit rocks in the Tyrrhenian Sea in January 2012, killing 32 of the 4,200 people on board.
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The ship is due to be towed away from the Mediterranean holiday island, probably by next spring, and broken up into scrap.
Francesco Schettino, the captain of the wrecked Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, has been in and out of court several times since the incident and has repeatedly stated that he is innocent of the charges of manslaughter brought against him.
Schettino is accused of negligently steering the cruise ship too close to shore while conducting a maneuver known as a "salute" where the cruise liner paralleled the shore and came very close to land.
Schettino took the cruise ship off course with passengers and crewmembers coming close to the Tuscan island of Giglio, where it struck a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The gash on the side of the ship flooded the engine rooms and caused the ship to capsize just hours after it had left port.
Making the case against him worse, Schettino left the ship before everyone was evacuated after it ran ashore and became capsized.
Costa Concordia passengers who survived the wreck as well as victims' loved ones have attended the court hearings and are seeking compensation.
"We want to look him in the eyes and see how he will react to the accusations," one survivor, Michael Liessen of Germany, told Yahoo News.
