Emergency services work near the scene where a sailboat sank off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italy, Monday. Reuters-Yonhap One person was killed and rescuers were searching for six others missing after a superyacht sank during a sudden storm off the coast of Italy's Sicily, officials said. The boat had 22 people aboard, including 10 crew members, the coast guard said.
The majority of those aboard were British, according to Italian media. Fifteen people were plucked from the water, officials said, including, according to local media reports, a mother and her baby. "This morning around 5:00 a.
m. (0300 GMT), following a violent storm, a 56-meter yacht called Bayesian, flying the British flag, sank near Porticello," the Italian coast guard said in a statement. Rescuers backed by helicopter who were scouring the waters found one body on Monday, the coast guard said.
"One body was located in the wreck but not yet recovered, at a depth of around 50 metres," a spokesman told AFP. Earlier, the coast guard said that four Britons, two Americans and one Canadian were missing, it said. According to media, the yacht was anchored some 700 metres from the Porticello port when it was struck by a waterspout, which roughly resembles a mini tornado over a body of water.
"I was at home when the tornado struck," fisherman Pietro Asciutto told Ansa news agency. "I immediately closed all the windows. Then I saw the boat, it just had one mast, it was really big.
I saw .