One dead, six missing, 15 rescued after luxury British yacht sinks off Sicily | BBC News

let bring you an update now on our breaking story in the last hour six people are missing and one person has died after a luxury yacht sank in the early hours of Monday off the coast of Sicily now the Italian Coast Guard says four Britain two Americans and a Canadian citizen are missing and what we're seeing here now is live pictures from off the coast of sicy because a rescue effort is still very much underway uh we can bring in in a moment our transport correspondent Tom Simons who's been looking closely at what is happening there but let's just uh bring you first this comment from a local fisherman now he describes the moments leading up to the tornado hitting we went down to the boat while waiting for saos to go on a fishing trip I saw flashes of lightning and I didn't like the look of the sky so we stopped inside the dog and waited for it to pass at around 4:00 the water spouts hit the town everyone inside the harbor was scared our boat was thrown onto its side 15 minutes later we saw a flare in the sea once the water spout had passed we went out to inspect all we saw were cushions and the rest of the boat which had sunk we didn't find any men in the sea quite an evocative uh statement there Tom from one of the fishermen who was uh experiencing what was happening there but what do we know about what's happening there at the moment well let's rewind to last night we have a picture taken by somebody on shore of this super yacht uh it's 56 M long safely anchored out in the bay off this Sicilian Port um and until the morning that's where it stayed um we also have pictures at about 5:00 4:00 local time in Italy of a a massive storm hitting a local town and you saw that description there of that uh fishing Captain describing what he saw a water spout now we can't confirm that but that's what he said he saw what we do know is that the basian seems have sunk at that point the 22 people on board that's about 12 guests and 10 crew tried to escape and some of them 15 of them managed to get onto a nearby yacht and then rescued by Coast Guard uh but after that nobody else emerged from uh the wreckage of this vessel it's thought that seven people are missing and certainly one body bag has been filmed being taken onto the shore uh at the Port nearby and do we know the nationalities of those who are missing we we do this is a British uh Flagship uh with a crew and staff crew and passengers on board who are mainly from Great Britain but there is one New Zealand citizen one from Sri Lanka an Irish National and two people with dual British French citizenship and one of the survivors we understand as a one-year-old child and what about the rescue efforts that are being made at the moment we can see some activity there just from these live pictures we're getting well by all accounts it was a very quick response from the Coast Guard uh in uh this area they went out with a number of vessels and tried to to to help those coming off the off the yacht that rescued from the main vessel that went down today they've been searching the area both with their own surface ships but also divers who've been going down 50 MERS to see this vessel presumably on the on the bed of the sea to try to spot anybody inside and of course it's quite possible this happened ear early hours of the morning that people were inside their cabins and that would have made it very hard to escape it's worth just pointing out people who don't know how the Mediterranean operates and these boats operate this was not mored in the harbor where it would have been protected by the walls at least from the waves it was anchored out offshore that's CU these Yachts are pretty big and it's hard to get them into a small Harbor uh what happens generally with superiots is the guest are fered into to shore to perhaps to have dinner on small tenders uh so there will be an investigation into whether this sinking could have been prevented but at the moment this is rescue operation and also presuming this is incredibly unusual and it like this we're looking at the live pictures the sea seems quite calm people are moving about on the water there's no After Effects it seems from the storm or whatever happened well our weather team say that this was a very intense set of storms that passed through the North Coast of Sicily at about that time they can't confirm a tornado but it might suggest that's what happened because we have this yacht alongside that appears to have been untouched or at least able to rescue those who came off the uh the B Ian and we have this very big sailing ship that's gone down very close by by all accounts so that may be the weather conditions I think will be something that will be looked at very closely but as you see now the storm has passed and the rescue operation is taking place in relatively calm seas Tom thanks so much for that uh we are getting updates from the Coast Guard and from the authorities and our own team as well who are on the way to Sicily we have a live page up and running on the BBC News website if you'd like to stay across the story and keep following it do log on uh and you'll get regular updates on the situation there and we will also keep a cross it for you here on BBC News