280 out of of approximately 300 have been rescued.
Of twelve truck drivers who were missing following the ferry blaze, one man emerged unharmed.
A 21 year-old man was found alive aboard a ferry that has been on fire for for three days. The Greek coastguard equivalent is currently conducting an operation to rescue 4-5 more passengers who are alive.
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Rescuers had first spotted a 21-year-old man on the stern of the stricken vessel as it was being towed to port.
The ferry was 1.5 miles (about two kilometres) off the northern part of Corfu, the coastguard said.
The smiling Belarussian was taken to Corfu on a coastguard boat wearing flip flops and put in an ambulance heading to the hospital, television footage showed.
“I’m fine”, he told journalists.
“Tell me I’m alive,” the truck driver, had told rescuers, according to the Proto Thema news website.
Clad in tan shorts and a black t-shirt, he climbed down a ladder into a rescue boat, according to images from the iefimerida news website.
“I was in my cabin. I went to the lower deck. I heard voices. I did not see others,” the survivor told rescuers.
The news of the man’s “miraculous” survival, according to Greek media, had raised hopes further lives might be saved.
“There is optimism. Given the fact this man managed to get to the upper deck in these conditions,” coastguard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told Ert television
According to the fire brigade, 40 firemen were deployed in the area on Sunday morning to help with rescue efforts.
“The thermal load and the toxicity on the vessel remain high. In some areas, fire is still burning. The operation is really delicate”, Shipping deputy minister, Costas Katsafados told Skai.
The blaze broke out on the Italian-flagged Euroferry Olympia late Thursday as it sailed from Igoumenitsa in Greece to Brindisi in Italy, with nearly 300 people aboard.
Criticism has mounted over conditions aboard the vessel, which was reported to be carrying fuel and “corrosive, dangerous goods”.
Rescuers had managed to save 280 passengers on Friday, evacuating them to Corfu, but 12 lorry drivers remained missing.
The man rescued on Sunday was one of those drivers, the coastguard said.
Authorities initially gave the missing as seven from Bulgaria, three from Greece, one from Turkey, and one from Lithuania.
On Sunday, they said there was an error and the missing Lithuanian was actually the man saved, who was from Belarus.
The drivers are believed to have been asleep inside their lorries when the blaze broke out.
Olympia was carrying an estimated 800 cubic metres of fuel and 23 tons of “corrosive dangerous goods”, according to Italy’s environment ministry which said on Saturday that a “possible spill” was detected after a fly-over by an Italian coastguard aircraft.
The vessel was officially carrying 239 passengers and 51 crew, as well as 153 trucks and trailers and 32 passenger vehicles, the Grimaldi company has said.
But the coastguard has said two of the 281 people rescued were Afghans not on the manifest, sparking fears that more undocumented passengers could also be missing. Read more from Guardian
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