(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
AP
Porticello, Sicily: Divers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily found the bodies of four passengers Wednesday and searched for two more as questions intensified about why the vessel sank so quickly when a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed.
Rescue crews unloaded three body bags from the rescue vessels that pulled into port at Porticello. Salvatore Cocina, head of the Sicily civil protection agency, said one other body had also been found in the wreckage for a total of four.
The discovery indicated the operation to search the hull on the seabed 50 meters (164 feet) underwater was a recovery one, not a rescue, given the amount of time that had passed and that no signs of life had emerged over three days of searching, maritime experts said.
The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday as it was moored about a kilometer (a half-mile) offshore. Civil protection officials said they believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.
Fifteen people escaped in a lifeboat and were rescued by a nearby sailboat. One body was recovered Monday - that of the ship's chef, Recaldo Thomas, of Antigua.
Thomas was born in Canada, according to his cousin David Isaac, but would visit his parents' homeland of Antigua as a child, moving permanently to the tiny eastern Caribbean island in his early 20s. Italian officials previously listed Antigua as the nationality of someone on board.
The fate of six passengers had driven the search effort, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and associates who had successfully defended him in a recent U.S. federal fraud trial.
Lynch's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Meanwhile, investigators from the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor's Office were acquiring evidence for their criminal investigation, which they opened immediately after the tragedy even though no formal suspects have been publicly identified.
Questions abound about what caused the superyacht, built in 2008 by Italian shipyard Perini Navi, to sink so quickly, when the nearby Sir Robert Baden Powell sailboat was largely spared and managed to rescue the survivors.
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