Survivors of a plane crash that killed at least 13 people described yesterday how they swam for their lives after the Tunisian holiday charter flight ditched in the sea off Sicily and broke apart.

The ATR 72 turbo-prop plane, with 39 people aboard, was taking Italian holidaymakers from Bari in southeast Italy to the popular Tunisian resort island of Djerba when it went down in the sea on Saturday after engine problems.

?At a certain point we realised one of the engines had stalled?, said passenger Rosanna di Cesare who was going on holiday with her boyfriend and his mother. ?After a few minutes the other one stalled too and the plane started to lose altitude. It was like a film. Suddenly we hit and then it all went dark and the plane split apart?, the 36-year-old from Taranto, near Bari, told reporters. ?My boyfriend and I managed to swim out of the plane. The sea was rough and I grabbed hold of one of the wings while my boyfriend continued to look for his mother.?

<B>Pilot survived

While many passengers managed to hold on to the wings attached to a large piece of the fuselage that remained floating, others flailed in the choppy waters among pieces of luggage and fragments of the wreckage. ?I saw other passengers calling for help, they were screaming, but I can?t describe what I was thinking at that moment?, 25-year-old Gianluca La Forgia from Bari told Rome-based daily Il Messaggero.

Roberto Fusco, 24, escaped with minor injuries. ?I took out the lifejackets and followed all the procedures you hear at the start of a flight and you think are meant for other people,? he said. ?Now I don?t know when I?ll be getting on another plane.?

The pilot told hospital staff after he was rescued from the wreckage that both the engines failed, forcing him to make an emergency landing at sea. The flight was operated by Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair. ?All of a sudden one of the engines stopped?, the pilot said, according to Mario Re, chief doctor at the emergency ward of Palermo?s Civico hospital.

Less than an hour into the flight, the pilot made a distress call asking to land at Palermo, but the plane never made land and he was forced to put down 12 miles (19 km) out at sea. All 34 passengers on the flight were Italian. One witness quoted in the Italian media said the plane ?opened like a milk carton? after ditching in the sea.

Three people were still missing by midday yesterday, according to Palermo?s chief magistrate Piero Grasso. Newspapers reported that several of the holiday makers had chosen Djerba instead of Sharm el Sheikh because of fears of terrorism at the Egyptian resort where bomb attacks killed at least 64 people last month.

Pope Benedict said he shared in the mourning of the victims? families. ?I pray for the victims and the injured?, he told pilgrims and tourists gathered to hear his weekly blessing at his summer residence in Castelgandolfo outside Rome.

Investigators have begun probing the crash, and a team of experts from Italy?s air safety agency arrived in Palermo overnight to inspect the largest chunk of the fuselage which the coastguard had towed ashore. The crash was Italy?s worst air accident since 2001, when 118 people were killed at Milan?s Linate airport when a private jet collided with an SAS airliner in thick fog.

The ATR 72, made by Avions de Transport Regional, can carry up to 72 passengers. An ENAC official said the plane had passed safety inspections in Italy, most recently in March. ATR is jointly owned by France?s EADS and Alenia Aeronautica, a division of Italy?s Finmeccanica.

<B>Wadimir PANTALEONE</B>