An Italian prosecutor says emergency workers have not found any bodies on the burnt-out hulk of the Norman Atlantic ferry during inspections in the southern Italian port of Brindisi, but has warned that access to the wreck is still limited due to the large amount of smoke and danger of fires.

• Fears of more deaths in Greek ferry fire

Prosecutor Giuseppe Volpe told journalists that Saturday’s investigations, which involved the fire brigade, scientific police and port authorities, focused on the security systems, fire safety and evacuation measures of the ferry.

“At the same time, police scuba divers inspected the keel of the ship to verify if there was anything there that would cause navigational problems, and to verify, above all, if there was anything entangled under the keel,” he said.

“At the moment, but I repeat, we are at a very limited stage of our access on the ship, we have not discovered any bodies.”

Magistrates impounded the ship to investigate the cause of the fire and to retrieve the black box, which was found on January 2.

Mr Volpe said access to the ship was limited, with emergency teams struggling to inspect the cargo hold efficiently.

“Unfortunately, as you have seen the conditions aren’t optimum – there’s smoke, there’s danger of fire, so we are entering only gradually by degrees, very slowly and carefully and that’s the only way we will eventually discover if there are any human remains,” he said.

Reports of the number of missing have varied widely.

Greek coastguard said 18 are still unaccounted for and Italian figures of missing had originally been as high as 98, although authorities have reportedly brought that estimate down.

Six people – the captain, three crew members, the ship’s operator and its owner – are under investigation by a court in the southern Italian port of Bari for multiple manslaughter and causing a ship disaster.

The fire broke out on one of the lower garage levels of the vessel on December 28 while it was still in Greek waters and left the vessel drifting without power in stormy seas.

It took Greek, Albanian and Italian rescue teams 36 hours to evacuate 477 passengers and crew from the ship amid strong winds and rough seas.

The Italian-flagged ferry was chartered by Greek ferry operator Anek Lines and was sailing from Patras in western Greece to Ancona in Italy when it caught fire killing at least 11 people.

Grieving relatives wait for news of missing

Family members searching for their relatives continued to arrive in the Italian port of Bari, and some were visibly shocked after they had identified their loved one’s remains.

Gerasimos Kazantzidis was a Greek truck driver, who was on the Norman Atlantic ferry when it caught fire and managed to get to a lifeboat, but later died.

His son said a definitive identification had been made.

“Yes, he called me from the lifeboat. He told me that he fell into the lifeboat and that he was phoning me from the lifeboat,” said Mr Kazantzidis, who did not give his first name.

Mr Kazantzidis said that he had no idea when he would be able to take his father’s body home, but that he did remember his last words.

“My father said he really needed help, that the ship was on fire and that he was in a lifeboat and that he needed to be saved,” he said.