At least six people are dead after the 114,147-grt cruise ship Costa Concordia (built 2006) ran aground off Italy Friday.
Over 4,000 passengers and crew had to be evacuated after Italian-flagged ship hit a sandbar near the island of Giglio and listed 20 degrees.
"At around 1900GMT the 290-metre-long Costa Concordia cruise ship... began taking on water and tilting over by around 20 degrees," the Italian coast guard said in a statement,
The continuing rescue operation is reportedly being hampered by what the ship’s owners call a “worsening situation”.
Costa Crociera, the company which owns the ship, said it could not yet say what had caused the accident.
It added that “the position of the ship, which is worsening, is making more difficult the last part of the evacuation.”
Commander Francesco Paolilo told the Associated Press that helicopters are evacuating some 50 people still aboard the liner.
Costa Cruises said in a statement it was “too early to say what had caused the incident”.
They later confirmed that 3,200 passengers along with 1,000 crew members had all had been evacuated from the ship.
Passenger Luciano Castro told Italian media: “We were having dinner when all of a sudden the lights went out.”
“It seemed as if the ship struck something and then we heard a loud bang and everything fell to the floor.”
“The captain immediately came on the tannoy and said that there had been an electrical fault but it seemed very strange as the ship almost immediately began to list to one side.”
The cruise ship had set off from the Civitavecchia port near Rome earlier on Friday and had been due to visit Palermo, Cagliari, Palma, Barcelona and Marseille.
