Eight deaths reported as cruise ship runs aground off Italy
UPDATE, 11:55: Eight people are dead after the Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground off the Italian coast in an accident which forced the coast guard to evacuate over 4,000 people, AFP reports.
More than 30 people were also injured in the accident, several seriously, and several people were still missing after jumping overboard in panic as the ship began to tilt, the Messaggero newspaper said. One of the victims was a man in his 70s who died of a heart attack caused by the shock to his system when he jumped into the icy waters, reports said.
Most of the 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members were quickly evacuated, but around 200 people remained stranded on board.
According to the London Telegraph, the passengers" dinner was interrupted by a loud boom around 8 pm local time. An initial announcement claimed the ship was suffering an electrical failure, and ordered everyone onboard to don life-jackets.
"It was just like something out of the Titanic," one woman said. "You could tell straight away that the ship had hit something and no way was it an electrical fault."
A local mayor on Giglio, a popular vacation island about 18 miles off the Tuscan coast, said he was trying to find rooms to house the stranded passengers and crew overnight. The cruise ship had departed from the Civitavecchia port near Rome earlier on Friday with scheduled calls at Palermo, Cagliari, Palma, Barcelona and Marseille.
The Italian news agency ANSA said the Concordia started to take on water and lean on the right side after running aground on Giglio"s southern tip, in an area popular with divers and close to high cliffs.
ORIGINAL POST: More than 4,000 passengers