AP News, January 17th, 2007
Investigators will need weeks to understand the cause of this week's deadly collision between a container ship and a commuter hydrofoil near the entrance to the Sicilian port of Messina, Italy's transportation minister said Wednesday.
Alessandro Bianchi said in a report to the lower house of parliament that the Coast Guard was tracing the movements of both ships, plus those of a third vessel that was in the area at the time but did not appear to be directly involved in the collision.
Four crew members were killed and about 100 people were injured, including six seriously, in the collision Monday, Bianchi said. The hydrofoil, packed with workers and university students, was approaching Messina after crossing the Strait of Messina from Reggio Calabria.
Prosecutors have placed the captains of the container ship and the third vessel, a ferry, under investigation, as a matter of routine, Italian news agencies Apcom and ANSA reported. The captain of the hydrofoil was killed in the crash.
Bianchi said the hydrofoil was built in 1999 and was last inspected in March. British shipping company Borchard Lines Ltd. said on its Web site that the 6,700-ton container ship was built in 2004 and registered in Antigua and Barbuda.
Hydrofoils are fast-moving, motorized craft that skim over the sea's surface thanks to flat or curved finlike devices attached by struts to the hull which lift up the vessel.
Calabria, the "toe" of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula, is linked to the island of Sicily by air and sea routes.
