S Korea ferry accident
The third officer was at the helm of the ferry that capsized off South Korea, investigators said, as divers worked to access the sunken hull.
A total of 268 people - including scores of high school students - remain missing after Wednesday's disaster.
Twenty-eight people are now known to have died and 179 were rescued.
It is not clear why the ferry sank, but experts have suggested it either hit a rock or turned sharply, unbalancing the vessel as cargo shifted.
The vessel - named Sewol - had been travelling from Incheon, in the north-west, to the southern resort island of Jeju. It capsized and sank within a period of two hours, officials said.
A major search and rescue operation has been under way. Bad weather, poor visibility and strong currents hampered the divers' search on Thursday.
Salvage work
The BBC's Martin Patience, who is at the scene, says there are conflicting reports over whether divers have managed to enter the ferry.
He says one government agency reported a team of divers accessing the bridge and restaurant of the stricken vessel but that many of the students were thought to have been trapped on a different floor.
But coast guard officials quoted by Reuters later denied that divers had been deployed inside the ferry.
Air was also now being injected into the ship, two reports said, both to help any people trapped inside - though officials have said that survivors are unlikely - and to help refloat the vessel.
Coast guard officials, quoted by AFP, say the bodies picked up were found floating in the water, and none had been retrieved from the ship itself.
Three salvage cranes have also arrived at the scene, to raise the ship or move it to another area with weaker currents.
Our correspondent at the scene described "an absolutely desperate development for the families" as three more bodies were brought in from the rescue site on Friday.
"We will review the options very carefully, as the salvage operations may hurt survivors trapped inside," Yonhap news agency quoted a coast guard officer as saying.
Meanwhile, investigators have stated that the captain of the ferry, Lee Joon-seok, was not in charge when the ferry ran into trouble.
"It was the third officer who was in command of steering the ship when the accident took place," state prosecutor Park Jae-Eok told journalists.
"Whether or not they took a drastic turnaround... is under investigation," he said.
"Though surviving crews have different testimonies about the situation, we've been investigating the captain as he was suspected to leave the steering room for an unknown reason," Mr Park added.
Witnesses have accused the crew of telling passengers to remain where they were, rather than evacuate the sinking ship.
Messages and phone calls from those inside painted a picture of people trapped in crowded corridors, unable to escape the severely-listing ferry.
Some 350 of those on board were students from the same high school in a suburb of Seoul who were on a field trip.
Their relatives have endured a long wait for news - their anguish compounded by conflicting information about numbers of survivors issued early on.
In a public statement issued on Friday, families of the missing called for more urgent action.
"Nobody told us about what went wrong and what was happening out there. There was not even a situation room in charge by late Wednesday," a representative said.
"Our children would be shouting for help in the freezing water," he said. "Please help us save our children."
Maritime accidents in South Korea
- 1970: Sinking of passenger vessel Namyoung leaves 323 dead
- 1993: Sinking of passenger vessel Seohae Ferry leaves 292 dead
- 2007: Sinking of freighter Eastern Bright leaving 14 sailors missing
- 2009: Sinking of cargo ship Orchid Pia after a collision leaves 16 sailors missing
Source: Yonhap news agency
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