Four bodies have been found by divers looking for six people who went missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily, an insider told AFP on Wednesday.
The body of a man thought to be the yacht’s chef was found hours after the sinking on Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths from the accident off the Italian island to five.
The bodies that were discovered were not immediately identified. Among the six missing persons are UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah.
The 56-meter (185-foot) British-flagged “Bayesian” was struck by a waterspout, or mini-tornado, during a pre-dawn storm as it was anchored about 700 meters off Porticello.
It sank within minutes.
A mother with a one-year-old child and Lynch’s wife were among the fifteen individuals that were saved.
However, Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, Christopher Morvillo, the lawyer, and their daughter were all listed as missing.
An AFP correspondent witnessed more than six vessels depart the Port of Porticello within minutes of one another, just as word spread of the dead’ discovery.
Afterwards, a few of them came back carrying body bags that were eventually placed in a tent on the dock by emergency personnel.
The yacht is mostly intact and is sitting on the bottom around 50 meters below the surface. Firefighters had previously stated that the search was a “long and complex” effort.
Although the 75-meter mast was reported by witnesses to have broken, reports on Wednesday indicated that it also survived the catastrophe.
