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One man has died and six people are missing after a luxury yacht sank in freak weather conditions off the coast of Sicily.
The 56m British-flagged Bayesian was carrying 22 people – 12 passengers and 10 crew – when a heavy storm that created waterspouts struck early on Monday.
Fifteen people were rescued and a search operation for those unaccounted for – who include the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch – is continuing.
Here is what we know about the tragedy so far and how it unfolded.
Who is missing and who survived?
The Bayesian was struck by a sudden and powerful storm in the early hours of Monday morning, witnesses say.
It was reportedly anchored to the sea bed outside the harbour at Porticello, a small fishing village to the east of Palermo, when what the Italian coastguard described as a “violent storm” hit.
The storm was so fierce that it caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air and mist, to appear over the sea.
Witnesses told Italian news agency Ansa that the Bayesian’s anchor was down when the storm struck, causing the 72m (236ft) aluminium mast to break in half and the ship to lose its balance and sink.
It disappeared beneath the water at about 05:00 local time (04:00 BST).
A doctor treating survivors said the ship “capsized within a few minutes”.
The ship’s unusually tall mast may have contributed to its sinking, according to Matthew Schanck, chair of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the mast acted almost like a sail in the strong wind “especially with it being so high”.
The extreme winds could have caught the mast and pushed the yacht over, he said.
Karsten Borner, captain of a nearby boat, said after the storm had passed, the crew noticed the yacht that had been behind them had disappeared.
“We saw a red flare, so my first mate and I went to the position, and we found this life raft drifting,” he told Reuters.
His crew took on board some survivors, including three who were seriously injured.
Another witness, Fabio Cefalù, captain of a trawler, said he was about to go out on a fishing trip when he saw flashes of lightning so he stayed in the harbour.
“At about 04:15 we saw a flare in the sea,” he said, according to the EVN news agency reports.
“We waited for this waterspout to pass. After 10 minutes we went out to the sea and we saw cushions and all the rest of the boat [that had sunk], and everything which was on the deck, at sea. However, we did not see any people in the sea.”
Another fisherman described seeing the yacht sinking “with my own eyes”.
Speaking to the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, the witness said he was at home when the tornado hit.
“Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very big,” he said.
Shortly afterwards he went down to the Santa Nicolicchia bay in Porticello to get a better look at what was happening.
He added: “The boat was still floating, then all of a sudden it disappeared. I saw it sinking with my own eyes.”
One of the survivors, British tourist Charlotte Golunski, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica how she held up her one-year-old daughter Sofia to stop her from drowning.
She said the two of them and her partner James survived only because they were up on deck when the yacht sank.
They were woken by “thunder, lightning and waves that made our boat dance”, and it felt like “the end of the world” before they were thrown into the water.
Charlotte said: “For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea, then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves.”
She added: “I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.
“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”
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