Rescuers have resumed searching the above-water section of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise liner, but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies.
Civil protection officials said that until the waves ease off, divers will not swim into the submerged part of the vessel near the port of Giglio, a tiny island off the Tuscan coast.
Coastguard divers have been concentrating on parts of the ship where survivors have said many passengers were awaiting evacuation the night of January 13 after the Concordia's hull was gashed by a reef as the cruise liner came too close to the island.
After divers extracted a woman's body yesterday from a corridor near what had been an evacuation staging point, the death toll rose to 12. Twenty people, most of them passengers, are still missing.
So far, the Concordia's fuel tanks are holding, but special crews are waiting for the end of rescue efforts so they can extract 2,200 metric tons (nearly half a million gallons) of heavy fuel.
In a separate undersea mission, police divers yesterday swam into the captain's cabin to retrieve his safe,...
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