Divers of the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian Corps. of Firefighters arrive with a body bag at the back of the boat in Porticello near Palermo, on August 21, 2024 two days after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)
Porticello, Italy: Divers searching for six missing people following the sinking of a superyacht off Sicily have found two bodies, a source close to the search told AFP Wednesday.
The discovery brings the confirmed death toll from the disaster off the Italian island to three, after the body of a man believed to be the yacht's chef was recovered hours after the sinking on Monday.
There were no immediate details about the bodies found. UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah are among the six people missing.
The 56-metre (185 feet) British-flagged "Bayesian" had been anchored some 700 metres off Porticello when it was struck by a waterspout -- akin to a mini-tornado -- during a pre-dawn storm.
It sank within minutes.
Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch's wife and a woman with a one-year-old baby.
But the tech entrepreneur and his daughter, his lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were all reported missing.
Shortly before the news emerged of the bodies found, an AFP reporter saw more than half a dozen boats leave the port of Porticello all within minutes of each other.
Some of them later returned, one carrying a body bag which was then carried by emergency service workers into a tent on the quay.
Firefighters had earlier said that searching the yacht, which is largely intact and resting on the seabed some 50 metres down, was a "long and complex" operation.
Despite eyewitness testimonies that the 75-metre mast had snapped, reports on Wednesday suggested that it too survived the incident.
