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Officials to search Costa Concordia for lost body before scrapping it

Officials recovering the wrecked Costa Concordia promised to search for the one unrecovered body before breaking the ship up for scrap.

Franco Gabrielli, who heads the Civil Protection Department overseeing the removal, said it was a “great sorrow” the body of an Indian waiter was never found after the cruise liner struck a reef and turned over, killing 32 people, off the Italian island of Giglio.

The giant ship, which smashed into rocks off the holiday island in January 2012, has been sitting for nine months deep in the water, resting on a specially-constructed platform made of steel girders and thousands of sacks of cement.

Crews uprighted the ship two years ago, and will now float it again in what is being billed as the largest maritime salvage in history.

The Concordia is more than twice the size of the Titanic.

But even with the liner’s recover, there will be little cause for celebration, said Giglio’s mayor, Sergio Ortelli.

“Once the ship is removed from our island, no one will be celebrating because, even after two years, the tragedy of what we witnessed remains,” Ortelli said. “We want this final phase to be over as soon as possible.”

The Concordia rammed into Giglio as its captain, Francesco Schettino, tried to perform a “salute” to the island for the benefit of members of the crew.

He claims that the rocks the ship hit were not marked on his charts, but marine experts have said that even if that was true, he shouldn’t have ventured so close.

Schettino is on trial in Grosseto, in Tuscany, on charges of manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster and abandoning ship. He denies all the charges.