Death toll hits 11, as Germans, Americans, Peruvians, Indians and more hope for news of kin who were onboard liner
The last time anyone saw Gabriele Grube, she was insisting a trio of wheelchair users take her place on one of the life rafts which had come to rescue passengers from the stricken Costa Concordia.
"People were fighting to get a place on the rescue boats. When three people in wheelchairs arrived, we let them go in front of us," her friend Angelika Blank told Antenna Bayern radio.
All of a sudden, the ship tipped and the women slid across the deck to the other side. Blank lost sight of her companion but managed to reach the shore. Grube, it seems increasingly likely, may not have been so lucky.
With no survivors having been found since Sunday, Grube, a 52-year-old from Oberasbach in Bavaria, is one of the 35 people feared dead after the cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany on Saturday night.
Five more bodies were recovered from the boat on Tuesday, raising the official death toll to 11. Twenty-four people were still missing on Tuesday night.
Before the five bodies were found, those missing were 14 German, five Italian, four French and two American passengers and four crew from Italy, Peru, India and Hungary.
As divers continued to search the wreckage, the latest of the victims confirmed dead was named as Tomás Alberto Costilla Mendoza, a 50-year-old from Peru's third largest city, Trujillo.
Mendoza had reportedly worked for the Costa Cruceros company for 17 years and was a cleaning supervisor onboard the cruise ship.
"He was a very good boy, so communicative with everyone," his mother told local TV on Sunday.
The two Americans missing in the disaster were identified on Monday as 69-year-old Jerry Heil and his wife Barbara, 70, a retired couple from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, who had been eagerly looking forward to their European holiday.
"They raised four kids and sent them all to private school, elementary to college, so they never had any money," Sarah Heil, one of the couple's daughters, told reporters.
"So when they retired, they went travelling. And this was to be a big deal, a 16-day trip. They were really excited about it," she added.
More than 200 Indians were aboard the cruise ship, almost all working as crew. Most were from the Mumbai region. All have been accounted for apart from 33-year-old Terrence Russell Rebello from the Naigaon area of Mumbai.
One rescued Indian crew member told The Calcutta Telegraph that Rebello was last seen helping passengers.
The German foreign office issued a statement on Tuesday confirming that 12 Germans were missing.
Guido Westerwelle, the foreign minister, refused to confirm whether any of the 11 bodies found so far had been identified as Germans.
Luca Cari, a spokesman for the firefighters leading the operation, said there was still a "glimmer of hope" that survivors could be found.