Rome — Six people, including two Americans, were missing Monday after a sailboat sank off the coast of Sicily, southern Italy, during a violent storm. The 180-foot-long sailboat was anchored about half a mile off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, with 22 people on board, 10 crew members and 12 passengers.
The ship sank around 5 a.m. (11 p.m. ET Sunday) after being hit by a possible waterspout caused by the storm. Italian media reported that the winds broke the ship’s mast, throwing it off balance and causing it to capsize.
Fifteen of the passengers were able to get off the boat and were rescued by a Dutch-flagged vessel anchored nearby. They were brought ashore by the Italian coastguard and firefighters.
Reuters
One body — that of an unidentified man — has been recovered, but six people remain missing, the coast guard said, including Americans, Britons and Canadians. Italian media reported that two Americans were among the missing, but CBS News could not immediately reach the coast guard to confirm that figure.
Among the survivors is a one-year-old British girl who was being treated at a nearby hospital with her parents. They are doing well, according to Italian media.
Search operations were still underway in the area Monday, with four Coast Guard vessels, a Coast Guard helicopter and a National Fire Service dive team involved. The Bayesian appears to have sunk in an area about 160 feet deep.
According to Italian media, divers from the fire brigade reached the boat and saw bodies trapped inside some cabins.
Reuters
Witnesses said the boat sank quickly.
“I was at home when the tornado hit,” fisherman Pietro Asciutto told local media. “I immediately closed all the windows. Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very big. I saw it suddenly sink… The boat was still floating, then suddenly it disappeared. I saw it sink with my own eyes.”
Dozens of migrants have died trying to reach Sicily and the smaller Italian islands In recent years, Sicily lies just 100 miles off the east coast of Tunisia in North Africa, and the Mediterranean crossing has often been the scene of rescues and nautical disasters, with people smugglers regularly sending small boats overloaded with desperate people into the sea.
