A young Moldovan woman who translated evacuation instructions from the bridge after the Costa Concordia ran into a reef emerged as a potential new witness Thursday in the investigation into the captain's actions on that fateful night. 
 
 Shipwreck survivor Kandari Sujan Singh, center, interacts with the media after arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. The first batch of Indians... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, and made available, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012, Francesco Schettino, the captain of the luxury cruiser Costa Concordia, which ran aground off Italy's Tuscan... (Associated Press) 
 
 Shipwreck survivors Kandari Sujan Singh, left, and Mukesh Kumar, right, prepare to interact with the media after arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Shipwreck survivors Kandari Sujan Singh, left, and Mukesh Kumar, right, prepare to interact with the media after arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Workers of the Rotterdam-based Smit Salvage company, who have not as yet won the contract to salvage the cruise ship Costa Concordia and empty the ship of fuel to avert an environmental catastrophe, after... (Associated Press) 
 
 People view the cruise ship Costa Concordia as it lays on its side after running aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. Divers have resumed the search for 21 people... (Associated Press) 
 
 People view the cruise ship Costa Concordia from the harbor wall, as it lays on its side after running aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. Divers have resumed... (Associated Press) 
 
 Italian divers chat as they prepare to head out to the cruise ship Costa Concordia, as it lays on its side after running aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. ... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012 file photo, Italian naval divers recover a body from the cruise ship Costa Concordia. The $450 million ship was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when... (Associated Press) 
 
 An Italian Navy vessel speeds by as firefighters stand on the Costa Concordia cruise ship as it leans on its side after running aground on the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012.... (Associated Press) 
 
 A laser scanner is pointed to take measurements on the position of the cruise ship Costa Concordia as it leans on its side after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan.... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, and made available Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012, Francesco Schettino, right, the captain of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground Friday... (Associated Press) 
 
 The cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. The $450 million Costa Concordia cruise ship was carrying more... (Associated Press) 
 
 Shipwreck survivor Mukesh Kumar, center, interacts with the media after as his sister Santosh Kumari, left, looks on after he arrived at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated photo provided Monday, Jan. 16, 2012 by the St. Piux X Catholic Church directory in White Bear Lake, Minn. shows Jerry and Barbara Heil. The Heils are among those still missing after a cruise... (Associated Press) 
 
 Italian media have said prosecutors want to interview 25-year-old Dominica Cermotan, who had worked for Costa as a hostess fluent in several languages but was not on duty when she boarded the ship Jan. 13 in the Italian port of Civitavecchia. 
 
 The $450 million Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-marked rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13 after the captain made an unauthorized diversion from his programmed route. The ship then keeled over on its side and is still half-submerged nearly a week later. 
 
 In interviews with Moldovan media and on her own Facebook page, Cermotan said she was called up to the bridge of the Concordia after it struck the reef to translate evacuation instructions for Russian passengers. She defended Capt. Francesco Schettino, who has been vilified in the Italian media for leaving his ship before everyone was evacuated safely. 
 
 "He did a great thing, he saved over 3,000 lives," she told Moldova's Jurnal TV. 
 
 Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship, is under house arrest, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship. 
 
 Eleven people have been confirmed dead in the disaster and 21 others are still missing. 
 
 Divers searched for the missing Thursday after a day-long break and a new audiotape emerged of the Concordia's first communication with port officials who inquired about what was wrong. In the tape, an officer insists the ship had only experienced an electrical blackout _ comments that came a full 30 minutes after the ship had rammed violently into the reef. 
 
 Italian media reported the officer on the call was Schettino, but that could not be independently confirmed. 
 
 Cermotan said on her Facebook page that she wasn't on duty the night of the grounding but was with Schettino, other officers and the cruise director on the bridge. She said she was called up from dinner to help with translations of instructions for how the small number of Russian passengers should evacuate. 
 
 "We were looking for them, searching for them (the Russians)," she told Jurnal. "We heard them all crying, shouting in all languages." 
 
 She said Schettino had stayed on deck until 11:50 p.m., when he ordered her into a lifeboat; the ship had hit the reef at 9:45 p.m. 
 
 Prosecutor Francesco Verusio declined to comment on whether he was seeking Cermotan as a witness, citing the ongoing investigation. 
 
 Without providing her name, Costa said the woman was registered with the ship and that it was prepared to give authorities both her identity and the paperwork for her ticket. 
 
 Divers, meanwhile, were focusing on an evacuation route on ship's fourth level, now about 18 meters (60 feet) below the water's surface, where five bodies were found earlier this week, Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TG 24. Crews set off small explosions Thursday to blow holes into hard-to-reach areas for easier access by divers. 
 
 Seven of the dead were identified Thursday by authorities _ four French passengers, one Spanish and one Italian passenger and one Peruvian crew member. Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who news reports said would have turned 86 next week, was buried in Sardinia. 
 
 Italian authorities have identified 32 people who have either died or are missing: 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French, two Peruvians, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Spain. 
 
 The ship's sudden movement on the reef Wednesday had postponed the start of a weekslong operation to extract the half-million gallons of fuel on board the vessel. Italy's environment minister issued a fresh warning Thursday about the implications if the ship shifts and breaks any of its now-intact oil tanks. 
 
 "We are very concerned" about the weather, minister Corrado Clini told Mediaset television. "If the tanks were to break, the fuel would block the sunlight from getting to the bottom of the sea, making a kind of film, and that would cause the death of the marine system." 
 
 The area is very close to a marine sanctuary for dolphins, porposies and whales. 
 
 Crew members returning home have begun speaking out about the chaotic evacuation, saying the captain sounded the alarm too late and didn't give orders or instructions about how to evacuate passengers. Eventually, crew members started lowering lifeboats on their own. 
 
 "They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and to not panic," French steward Thibault Francois told France-2 television Thursday. "I told myself this doesn't sound good." 
 
 He said the captain took too long to react and that eventually his boss told him to start escorting passengers to lifeboats. "No, there were no orders from the management," he said. 
 
 Indian ship waiter Mukesh Kumar said "the emergency alarm was sounded very late," only after the ship "started tilting and water started seeping" in. 
 
 He was one of four Indians flown to New Delhi on Thursday, the first to return out of 203 Indians aboard the Concordia. 
 
 "The ship shook for a while, and then the crockery stated falling all over," said Indian Kandari Surjan Singh, who worked in the ship's galley. "People started panicking. Then the captain ordered that everything is under control and said it was a normal electric fault ... so people calmed down after that." 
 
 The ship's operator, Crociere Costa SpA, has accused Schettino of causing the wreck by making the unapproved detour and the captain has acknowledged carrying out what he called a "tourist navigation" that brought the ship closer to Giglio. The company had approved a similar maneuver in August. 
 
 However, Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading maritime publication, says its tracking showed that the ship's August route actually took the Concordia slightly closer to Giglio than the course that caused the grounding last week. 
 
 Costa is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Alison Mutler reported from Bucharest. Fanuel Morelli contributed from Giglio, Italy and Angela Charlton from Paris. ||||| The captain who steered his 114,000-tonne vessel into rocks off the Italian coast last Friday was drinking wine at dinner with a "beautiful" woman minutes earlier, a witness has claimed. 
 
 Francesco Schettino, who is under house arrest accused of manslaughter and abandoning ship after he grounded the Costa Concordia on the island of Giglio following the collision, has told investigators that he had not drunk alcohol that night. But a passenger, Angelo Fabbri, has revealed that he and his wife watched Schettino –who is married with a child – enjoy a gourmet meal with red wine at the ship's most exclusive restaurant. 
 
 "Schettino, in a dark uniform, was sat in front of a young woman," Fabbri told newspaper Il Secolo XIX. "She appeared young, initially we thought she could even be his daughter. A beautiful woman, slim, shoulder-length blonde hair, a black dress with bare arms. They were laughing, they were informal, it was very merry," he said. "The wine?" he added. "There is no doubt they drank, at least a whole decanter, the last drops were poured into the commander's glass." 
 
 Fabbri described Schettino as a "show-off", and said he, the woman and another officer left the restaurant around 9.05pm. At about 9.45pm, he was back on the bridge, where he steered the ship into rocks while attempting to "salute" a former captain on Giglio. Italian media reported on Thursday that investigators are trying to interview Domnica Cermontan, 25, a Moldovan employee of Costa Crociere, the cruise ship's owner. 
 
 A spokesman for the company said it was ready to provide authorities with information about "the woman who on the evening of the incident appears to have dined with Captain Schettino". 
 
 In an interview with Romanian newspaper Adevarul, Cermontan said she left the bridge at 11.50pm, at which time Schettino was still there. 
 
 Cermontan also told a Romanian TV station she believed Schettino saved the lives of passengers by grounding the vessel. "He has done something extraordinary," she said. Prosecutors believe that Schettino delayed telling the coast guard the ship was holed and then left the vessel while 300 passengers were still on board. 
 
 The bodies of 11 passengers and crew have been found by rescuers and 21 passengers remain unaccounted for. 
 
 According to audio tapes released on Thursday a crew member on board the ship told coast guard officials 30 minutes after the collision that the Costa Concordia had suffered a mere black out and that there was no emergency on board.
– What's this? Someone on the doomed Costa Concordia is actually praising the actions of Capt. Francesco Schettino: "Look at how many people are alive because of him. It’s a tragedy that people are missing, but he saved over 3,000 people on that ship because of his actions." So says 25-year-old Domnica Cemortan, reports the Telegraph. Schettino, however, may not be happy Cemortan has emerged in the spotlight. Details are still sketchy, but she may have been the young woman that passengers saw the captain dining with before the ship ran aground. Sample headline from the Guardian: "Italian captain linked to mystery woman." The Daily Mail, meanwhile, refers to her as a "glamorous blonde." The young Moldovan woman had worked as a hostess on the ship but apparently wasn't on duty this voyage, reports AP. Still, she said she went to the bridge with Schettino and other officers to help translate evacuation instructions to passengers, adding that Schettino was still on the deck when she evacuated about two hours later. Italian media say prosecutors plan to interview her.