Boat reaches Italian cruise ship adrift off Seychelles

---

A fishing boat has reached the cruise ship adrift in the Indian Ocean with more than 1,000 people on board, officials say.

The Costa Allegra suffered a fire in its generator room that caused it to lose power south-west of the Seychelles - an area where pirates are active.

It has no air-conditioning or cooking facilities and an emergency generator powering the radio "could fail at any minute", the Italian coast guard says.

Tugs are still some hours away.

The ship is from the same fleet as the Costa Concordia, which capsized off the Italian coast in January, killing 32.

Commander Cosimo Nicastro from the Italian coast guard told the BBC that the trawler - a French-registered ocean-going boat - could now maintain communications with rescue vessels if the ship's emergency battery failed.

"At any moment we could lose communication because the emergency battery could stop at any second," he said.

"The first step is to keep communications with the ship."

He said agencies involved in the rescue operation would reassess the situation later in the morning.

---