(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 18 - Greek officials said Friday that at least three people had been injured after a blaze broke out on an Italian ferry, the Grimaldi Lines Euroferry Olympia, close to the island of Corfu.
    Close to 300 people who were on board the ship were evacuated.
    Leonidas Roumbatis, the director of Corfu hospital, told Greek public television ERT that two passengers had been hospitalized as a precautionary measure with minor injuries and a 42-year-old crew member was suffering respiratory problems.
    Two Bulgarian drivers who were not evacuated and had been reported missing have been located, sources said.
    Grimaldi is organizing their evacuation.
    The company was checking its passenger and crew list after a Greek TV channel, Skai, reported that 14 people were unaccounted for.
    Grimaldi confirmed that 14 people were missing, but said that five of them have been located and were in the process of being rescued.
    Gruppo Grimald said "rescue and evacuation operations started immediately with all means available at the scene".
    The blaze is thought to have started in the hold of the ship, which was carrying lorries and their drivers.
    Most of the people on board, 242, were rescued by an Italian Finance Police vessel that was in the area for a separate operation.
    President Sergio Mattarella on Friday called Finance Police Commander Giuseppe Zafarana to thank the force for the rescue.
    Finance police officers reported that the rescued passengers said was there was panic aboard the ship because "the flames were really high".
    "When the fire broke out, the ship's commander went around the cabins and brought the passengers together on a single deck," Felice Lodovico Simone Cicchetti, the commander of the finance police vessel, told ANSA.
    "Then he gave the order to abandon ship, but the evacuation wasn't a stroll in the park".
    Grimaldi said the fire had not caused fuel to pour into the sea.
    (ANSA).