At least one person was confirmed to have died on the Euroferry Olympia, which caught fire on Friday and is still ablaze near the island of Corfu. Hundreds of others have been rescued.
Rescuers said on Sunday that at least one person had been found dead on a ferry that caught fire off the Greek island of Corfu on Friday, the first person known to have been killed in the blaze, though 10 others remain missing. Hundreds have already been taken safely off the stricken ship, the Italian-owned Euroferry Olympia, which had been carrying more than 290 passengers and crew members when the fire broke out a few hours after it left the northwestern Greek port of Igoumenitsa, bound for Brindisi, Italy. There were also 153 trucks and 32 cars aboard. The dead man was found when rescue workers opened the doors to a truck being carried on the ferry. “He had burns over a large part of his body,” said Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis, a spokesman for the Greek fire service. The victim’s identity was not immediately released. Earlier Sunday, a 21-year-old truck driver from Belarus became the latest passenger to be rescued from the ferry, and search operations were continuing for the other 10 people still unaccounted for, said Nikolaos Alexiou, a spokesman for the Greek Coast Guard.
