Sharjah24 - AFP: A passenger was on Sunday found alive aboard a ferry that has been ablaze off Greece for three days, coastguards said, with reports suggesting several more missing people have survived.
Eleven truck drivers remained unaccounted for on Sunday before Skai television reported that an operation was underway "to rescue 4-5 more passengers who are alive".
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 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.
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