Search-and-rescue divers today blasted holes in the hull of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off Italy's Tuscan coast as they accelerate a frantic search for 29 missing passengers and crew members, as well as a second black-box recorder.
A top coast guard official, Marco Brusco, said on state TV late Monday that 25 passengers and four crew members have not been found in the wreckage of the ship, including a 5-year-old girl.
Rescue teams searching for survivors blasted through the vessel's hull today, creating large holes for better access to lower decks of the ship.
Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the micro-charges set early today created four openings to allow divers "to enter easily for the search." The holes were made both above and below the water level, the Associated Press reported.
Operations are now in motion to retrieve a second black-box recorder that has been located in the wreckage, Warrant Petty Officer Massimo Macaroni of the Italian Coast Guard told ABC News. The device, along with another recorder that has been found, will be analyzed by prosecutors and provide authorities with "a complete picture of how the disaster unfolded," CNN reported.
The Carnival Corp. of Miami is the Italian cruise line's parent company.
The number of people reported missing continues to fluctuate, as the coast guard said all but 16 people -- including a couple from Minnesota -- had been accounted for. The official number rose after officials in other countries had reported higher numbers of missing citizens.
PHOTOS: Cruise Ship Runs Aground Off Italy
La Stampa newspaper reported today that six bodies have been recovered and that rescuers saw a seventh body, but couldn't reach it. La Stampa is the only Italian media outlet reporting this, while Italian newspaper Corriere della sera is still reporting that only six bodies have been recovered.
The U.S. Embassy in Rome estimates 120 Americans were on board the ship and 118 have been accounted for. The nationalities of the unaccounted for are: six Italians, 14 Germans, four French, one Hungarian, two Americans, one Indian and one Peruvian.
The possibility of finding passengers and crew still alive three days after the vessel ran aground near the small island of Giglio is growing slim, officials say.
"The hopes of finding any more survivors are fading," Sergio Ortelli, the mayor of Giglio, told The Sun Monday.
The rescue divers, who are risking their own lives to search for the missing, say they can hear the screech of steel every time the 114 thousand-ton vessel shifts around them.
Rescue efforts had been halted for about three hours earlier in the day because the huge vessel sits 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 half an inch and resumed their search for bodies and possible survivors.
PHOTOS: Inside the Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Tragedy
Three families have come forward saying they haven't heard from loved ones initially on the evacuee list.
"If there is someone still alive we hope to rescue them," Fire Captain Luciano Roncalli told ABC News. "We want to stay there and make sure that no one person may be alive."
Adding pressure is the fear of an ecological impact, as concerns grow that the 500,000 gallons of fuel on the ship could seep into the ocean. Rescue boats are already protectively deploying boom -- a temporary floating barrier used to contain a spill -- around the vessel.
New indications that the captain of the ship might have veered 4 miles off course on purpose have come to light as the sister of a waiter on board reportedly posted on Facebook that the ship would soon be moving toward the island.
"In a short period of time the Concordia ship will pass very close -- a big greeting to my brother who finally gets to have a holiday," the Facebook post read.
Francesco Schettino, the ship's captain, is being detained and questioned on allegations of manslaughter and abandoning the ship. He is scheduled to appear in court today.
Italy's La Repubblcia newspaper reports that Captain Schettino was heard saying after the last phone call on deck with the port authorities, "My career ends here. They will fire me."
At a news conference Monday, 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.
"We believe it has been a human error here -- the captain did not follow the authorized route, which is used by Costa ships very frequently," Foschi said, "probably more than 100 times a year we travel this route.
"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."
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.
Passengers and Crew Members Tell of Escape
Infrared video of the scene aboard the ship as it began to capsize shows people lined up like ants, trying to escape Friday night by holding hands and forming a human chain to get to the rescue boats below."We were not allowed to deploy any more life boats because the previous one had got stuck to the side of the ship. And it was chaos, because of glass, everything was everywhere," survivor James Thomas told ABC News.
Newly released videos show passengers seated in lifeboats, trying to figure out who was responsible for the accident. One woman IS heard saying, "Take pictures, take pictures, it is very important to discover whose fault it is…"
"It was every man for himself," Emily Lau, a passenger from Boston on board the Costa Concordia, said Monday on "Good Morning America."
"The main thing is no one knew how to help because they were never trained. That is the cruise ship's fault."
"We had to improvise. There was no instruction," Benji Smith, Lau's husband, told "GMA." "No one was telling us what to do."
ABC News Phoebe Natanson and Clark Bentson contributed to this report.
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