Survivors of a plane crash that killed at least 13 people described Sunday 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 realized 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."

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 cannot 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.

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.

Source: China Daily