ROME, Italy (AP) - A Tunisian airliner attempting an emergency landing in Sicily crash-landed off the coast and at least 13 of the 39 people on board were killed while three people were missing in the sea, Italian officials said.

Some of the 23 survivors had clung to the wings in rough seas about 16 kilometres (10 miles) off the Sicilian coast as rescuers in boats rushed to their aid, Italian news reports said.

The pilot contacted Rome airport officials at 3:24 pm (1324GMT) reporting engine trouble and asked permission to make an emergency landing in Palermo, said Nicoletta Tommessile, a spokeswoman for ENAV, Italy's air safety agency.

Sixteen minutes later, the pilot told tower officials: "We're ditching in the sea," she said.
Tunisian officials said all of the passengers were Italian, and TG24 television said most of them were from Puglia, the region in the "heel" of the Italian peninsula.

Palermo Prosecutor Piero Grasso, who is helping investigate the crash, told The Associated Press late yesterday that authorities had revised the number of confirmed dead from 19 to 13, with three people missing.

Earlier he had said there were 19 dead, but he blamed that error on overlapping information from various rescue groups, including fire department divers, coast guard boats and border police boats.
Grasso said 23 survived.

"The fuselage has been hooked up and will be towed" to shore, Grasso said by telephone. "There are no bodies in the wreckage. Three people are missing in the sea."

Palermo port official Vincenzo Pace told SKY TG24 TV that some of the 13 bodies were found several kilometres from the wreckage, apparently carried away in rough seas.
"The divers have confirmed that there are no bodies inside" the wreckage, Pace said.

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