Divers searching the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the Italian coast have found eight bodies on one of the passenger decks, including that of a missing five-year-old Italian girl, authorities said.

Italy's national civil protection agency, which is monitoring the operation off a Tuscan island, said three of the bodies were recovered a few hours after being spotted by fire department divers.

It said they are those of a woman, a girl and a man. Because of worsening weather, the divers were not able to immediately remove the other five bodies.

The bodies were being transferred to a hospital on the mainland for identification, a process which could take days.

Before the development, 15 people were listed as missing but only one of them was a child, Dayana Arlotti. The five-year-old girl was on the Mediterranean cruise with her father and his girlfriend. The girlfriend survived but the father was among the missing.

Including the missing - who are presumed dead - and bodies already recovered, the death toll in the accident stands at 32.

The Concordia, which was carrying some 4,200 passengers and crew, struck a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio on January 13, took on water and started listing badly until it lay on its side. Most of the victims were found on the capsized ship in the first week or two after the accident. Three corpses were recovered from the water a few hours after it grounded.

Officials co-ordinating the search efforts said divers went into an area where survivors had told rescuers some passengers had been gathering to await evacuation. Many of the ship's lifeboats could not be launched after the ship leaned on one side.

On Wednesday, helicopters lowered the Italian divers onto the above-water section of the Concordia, and then the divers scrambled down the side and swam through openings into wreckage.

Dayana's mother in the first days after the accident had been quoted as saying she was holding out hope her little girl somehow survived. After word came that the child's body was seen, she was reported to be heading to the hospital where the bodies were brought.