On board amateur video shows cruise ship peril

Dramatic amateur video released on Thursday showed the moment a giant wave smashed into a Mediterranean cruise ship, killing two people and injuring 14 others.
The footage, shot by a passenger on Wednesday and aired on Spanish television, showed the instant the huge wave hit what appeared to be a restaurant or lounge area, smashing in the window, triggering screams and sending shin-high water gushing across the floor.
The Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew members off the coast of northeastern Spain.
Passengers said people's cabins were flooded and the amateur video showed crew members checking rooms after the wave struck.
Other crew laid out large buckets as they attempted to bring the flooding under control.
The ship's owner and operator, Louis Cruise Lines, said the vessel was struck by three "abnormally high" waves more than 33 feet (10 metres) high that broke glass windshields in the forward section.
A Louis Cruise Lines spokesperson said the two dead passengers - a German and an Italian - suffered fatal injuries from the glass shards and ripped-out window frames and furniture.
The 14 fourteen passengers who sustained minor injuries were taken to hospital as a precaution, the spokesperson added. The ship sat docked at Barcelona's port on Thursday.
The company said arrangements were made to fly all 1,350 passengers back home and they could be seen leaving Barcelona's port in a convoy of buses on Thursday.
The ship will carry on with its normal cruise schedule later this month after repairs are completed, the spokesperson told the AP from Cyprus.
The ship was on a 12-day cruise from the ports of Genoa and Marseilles in the western Mediterranean, calling at Tangiers, Casablanca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cadiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and had been due to return to Genoa on Thursday.
Large waves are not rare in the Mediterranean, but ones that size occur only once or twice a year, said Marta de Alfonso, an oceanographer with the Spanish government.
This accident happened in an area of the Mediterranean called the Gulf of Leon, which is known for big waves when storms hit.