BARI, Italy — The evacuation of the Greek ferry that caught fire off Albania has been completed, and only the vessel's captain and four Italian sailors remain on board to assist in the operation, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said today.

Renzi said they would remain on the ferry to try to hook it up to a tug boat.

Helicopters defied high winds, stormy seas and darkness to pluck hundreds of passengers from the ferry as survivors told of a frantic rush to escape the flames and pelting rain.

The navy said the latest numbers indicate 414 people have been rescued from the ferry and five bodies removed.

The ferry company had originally said there were 478 passengers and crew on board the ferry. Officials couldn't immediately explain the discrepancy between the numbers.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The first full day of a growing, multi-nation hunt for an AirAsia passenger jet lost over Indonesian waters ended today with few clues to its disappearance and a grim acknowledgment by officials that “the worst may have happened.”Helicopters and surveillance aircraft from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia returned to their bases, some after flying 10 hours or more over a choppy Java Sea, the focal point of the search for the airliner that was carrying 162 mostly Indonesian passengers.The first tantalizing possible traces of the missing Airbus A320-200 were inconclusive or ultimately discounted.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran held a funeral today for a senior Revolutionary Guard commander who was killed during a battle against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq.State TV said the funeral for Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi was held in a Guard compound in Tehran.The Guard said Sunday that Taqavi was “martyred while performing his advisory mission” in Samarra. He is the highest ranking Iranian officer known to have been killed abroad since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told mourners at the funeral that Taqavi had died defending Iran from extremists, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.