Wary Italian authorities resumed their search for survivors in the wreckage of the Costa Concordia cruise ship today despite concerns that the vessel could shift and plunge off a ledge into deeper waters.
Rescue efforts had been halted for about three hours earlier in the day because the huge vessel is sitting on a 120-foot ledge and had shifted slightly as the water got rough. Officials feared the ship could be pushed off the ledge into water that is 224 feet deep.
Officials, however, told ABC News today that it had moved only about 1.5 centimeters and resumed their search for bodies and possible survivors.
The Costa Concordia was carrying 4,234 passengers and crew when it hit rocks Friday evening near Giglio, a small island off the coast of Tuscany. Investigators say the ship was an "incredibly close," about 450 feet from the shore.
Six people were killed and 16 people are still unaccounted for, according to the BBC.
At a news conference today, Costa Cruises chief executive officer Pier Luigi Foschi said the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had made an unapproved, unauthorized maneuver to change the ship's programmed course.
It's unclear why the ship was so close to shore. Early reports said that Schettino often brought the ship near island's port so passengers could take photographs. Italian media today, however, reported that he drew near the shore so he could wave to a friend who was on land.
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"The company will be close to the captain and will provide him with all the necessary assistance, but we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error," Foschi told a news conference in Genoa. "He wanted to show the ship, to [go] nearby this island of Giglio, so he decided to change the course of the ship to go closer to the island."
Schettino is suspected of manslaughter and abandoning ship.
A sixth body was found in the wreckage early this morning when rescue workers searched the part of the ship that is above water.
The body had yet to be identified, although it was confirmed by Italian news outlet Ansa that the man was a passenger on the ship. The man was found wearing a life vest on the second deck in a part of the ship that was not flooded by water.
The bodies of two passengers found wearing life jackets aboard the ship were identified Sunday, officials said. Both passengers were elderly men -- one Italian, the other Spanish. The bodies were found earlier Sunday near a gathering point in the submerged part of the luxury liner.
"While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship's master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences," Costa Cruises said in a statement. "The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and in handling the emergency the captain appears not to have followed standard Costa procedures."
Experts are still analyzing the ship's black box, which has already revealed a one-hour lag between the time of the impact on the rocks at 9:45 p.m. local time Friday and the ship's alarm call to the coast guard at about 10:43 p.m. Investigators suspect Schettino tried to maneuver the ship before alerting the coast guard, Ansa reported.
Schettino is in custody, facing possible charges of manslaughter and abandoning his ship. He reportedly left the stricken vessel at approximately 12:30 a.m., while many passengers didn't get safely off the ship until 6 a.m., Ansa reported.
The U.S. Embassy in Rome estimates 120 Americans were on board the ship and 118 have been accounted for.
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