Rescue workers were searching for survivors at the port of Genoa today, after a container ship smashed into a control tower in a night-time accident that left three dead and revived painful memories in Italy of a deadly cruise ship disaster last year.
Around 14 people were in the tower when it was knocked over, plunging some into the cold water and trapping others in a lift which toppled into the sea, media reports said.
One of the victims was reported to be Daniele Fratantonio, 30, who worked for the coast guard operations centre. The other two have yet to be identified.
Rescue workers dived into the inky waters around the port -- the busiest in Italy -- in a frantic search to find around six or seven people believed to be missing after the accident, which left four seriously wounded.
Others used dogs trained to find people in earthquake zones to see if survivors were trapped under the rubble around the tower.
The number of missing was not clear because the accident happened during a shift change at the vast metal tower, which bent over by 45 degrees before partially collapsing.
Three people were believed to have been trapped inside the lift, which divers were attempting to access and open under water, according to Il Secolo XIX daily in Genoa.
"I heard a terrible din and rushed out of my cabin," Roberto, the port's night watch, told La Repubblica newspaper. "It was an incredible sight: the control tower was leaning perilously."
At dawn, a mobile telephone which began to ring beneath the rubble strewn along the port raised the hopes of locating survivors, but it rang off before rescue workers could localise the sound.
An employee of the Messina Line company based in Genoa which owns the Jolly Nero confirmed that the ship had been involved in an accident when leaving the port but said the reason was not clear.
"The weather conditions were perfect, there was no wind, there were no other ships on the move. A ship of that size should not have been making that manoeuvre," Luigi Merlo, the head of Genoa's port authority, told reporters.
The crash spooked Italians still reeling from the Costa Concordia night-time shipwreck off Giglio island in January 2012 which left 32 people dead.
Indictment hearings against six suspects in the cruise liner disaster began in Italy on April 15.
