The Costa Allegra

BBC

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, reports the BBC.

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.

The ship's owner, Costa Cruises, has stressed that the Allegra - drifting about 32km (20 miles) from Alphonse Island, one of the atolls in the Seychelles - is steady and conditions are safe.

It says it is liaising with passengers' families via their emergency contact numbers, and has reached two-thirds of them. Contact has been made with the relatives of all the crew.

Italian authorities have directed three merchant ships and another fishing vessel towards the stricken cruise ship.

Authorities in the Seychelles say they have sent two tug boats and a coast guard ship to the scene but the tugs are not expected to reach the ship until around 1500 GMT on Tuesday

A plane has flown overhead and reported that the ship did not appear to be in danger.

Costa Cruises said that the ship sent out a distress signal when the fire broke out, and all passengers and crew not involved in fighting the fire assembled at the muster stations.

Most electric lights on board the ship are off as the batteries are being used to keep essential machinery going.

A spokesman said the situation on board was calm and the ship was stable.

Captain Giorgio Moretti said a helicopter would bring fresh food to the ship on Tuesday morning.

He said it had not been decided whether to try to transfer the passengers to other ships, or leave them on board until it is tugged to shore.

"The captain has assembled the passengers on the decks of the ship," he said.