The bodies were discovered after the Italian navy used explosives to blow holes in the wreck of the Costa Concordia to help in the hunt for those still missing.
Divers searching for survivors inside a stricken cruise ship off the Italian coast found five more bodies today, as prosecutors grilled the arrested captain over his role.
The bodies were discovered after the Italian navy used explosives to blow holes in the wreck of the Costa Concordia to help in the hunt for those still missing after Friday's disaster off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
"Scuba divers found five more bodies in the stern of the ship," Cristiano Pellegrini, a Giglio official, told AFP, but said their identities were not yet known.
The death toll has now risen to 11, leaving about two dozen still missing of the 4,200 people on board when the ship went down on Friday,
Earlier, officials had said that 12 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian were still unaccounted for. There were also reports of a missing five-year-old Italian girl.
The huge Costa Concordia cruise liner hit rocks and pitched over off the picturesque Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday, and survivors have recounted scenes of chaos after the disaster struck.
A black box transcript showed Francesco Schettino, who is reported to have sailed so close to the shore to please a local crew member, ignored a port official's order to return on deck after abandoning the stricken ship.
"Get back on board now. You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there," the official tells Schettino, according to the recording on one of the ship's "black boxes".
"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?" the official says.
Schettino, 52, was being interrogated today by Italian prosecutors, who have accused him of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship before all the passengers were rescued, although he has not yet been formally charged.
A judge was to rule whether to grant bail for Schettino, who was arrested on Saturday along with the first officer Ciro Ambrosio. Prosecutors called for him to be kept in custody.
The victims identified so far include two French passengers, an Italian and a Spaniard and one Peruvian crew member.
The Italian press reported that as the vessel began to pitch over, crew members initiated the evacuation procedure themselves, 15 minutes before Schettino eventually gave the command, Italian press reported.
Island residents have already said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit a reef known as the School Rocks, well known to inhabitants.
"It was bravado, Schettino was showing off, clowning around, it was incredibly stupid. I would sentence him not once but 10 times," said a former captain who worked with the ship's owner, Costa Crociere.
Costa Concordia's owners said yesterday that the accident occurred as a result of an "inexplicable" error by the captain.
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