Four bodies retrieved from Mike Lynch's sunken yacht in Sicily

Four bodies were retrieved from the sunken wreck of a yacht belonging to the wife of British tech magnate Mike Lynch, the Italian fire brigade said, adding that they were continuing to search for two missing people.

The bodies were brought ashore on rescue boats and taken to nearby hospitals for formal identification. Local authorities refused to give any information about who they might have found.

Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that two of the dead were Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, while Italy's Corriere della Sera said the only bodies identified so far were Morgan Stanley banker Jonathan Bloomer and US lawyer Chris Morvillo.

Bloomer's wife, Judy, and Morvillo's wife, Neda, also vanished when the British-flagged Bayesian, which had been carrying 22 people, was hit by a fierce, pre-dawn storm on Monday and sank.

Lynch, 59, was one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and had invited friends to join him on the luxurious yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a US fraud trial.

The 56-meter (184-foot) Bayesian had been anchored off the Sicilian port of Porticello when the storm struck and witnesses said it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes, baffling naval marine experts who said such a vessel, presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features, should have been able to withstand such weather.

The yacht is lying on its side at a depth of around 50 metres (165 feet) and is reportedly largely intact.

Specialist rescuers have been searching inside the hull of the sunken yacht for the past two days. The victims were believed to have been trapped in cabins, which have proved extremely hard to get to, with divers only able to stay in the vessel for 8-10 minutes before having to re-surface.

Fifteen people, including Lynch's wife, managed to escape the boat before it capsized, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.

Besides the diving team, the coast guard has deployed a remotely operated vehicle to scan the seabed and take underwater pictures and videos that it said may provide "useful and timely elements" for prosecutors looking into the disaster.