'Wrecked' Costa Concordia to be removed from Italian waters in June

The wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship will be towed away from the coast of north-west Italy in June, salvage officials said.

The stricken cruise liner will then be taken away to a port to be scrapped, the BBC reports.

Meanwhile, the ports in Italy, Britain, France, Turkey and China are bidding for the contract to dismantle the ship, the report added.

The doomed ship hit a reef near the island of Giglio in January 2012 with 4,000 passengers and crew on board, and later capsized killing 32 people.

Captain Francesco Schettino is currently on trial for multiple charges of manslaughter and for abandoning ship.

According to the report, the salvage team would start to fix at least 15 large tanks to the side of the ship, which will be filled with water, and then gradually emptied to give the ship enough buoyancy to float off the seabed.

In case that does not work, then the world's largest semi-submergible ship, the Dockwise Vanguard, will be on standby and can literally carry the ship into the port.