At least 163 people drowned and more than 100 were missing yesterday after two overcrowded ferries collided in a storm on a lake in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Survivors spoke of hundreds of people thrown into wind-whipped waters when the two ferries hit each other.
”I had my life saved only by clutching a barrel with some other people,” said Bienvenue Mwanku, a passenger who spoke to the press from Inongo, beside lake Mai-Ndombe, 440 kilometres north of Kinshasa, the capital.
”I saw people on the roof and the boat’s hull. When the boat split, everyone fell in the water, searching for something to hold on to,” the 23-year-old student said. ”Many pushed themselves up on to empty tin barrels but others drowned.”
The collision occurred late on Tuesday and news only reached Kinshasa on Wednesday night. Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo, the minister of humanitarian affairs, said yesterday that 222 people survived the disaster from the estimated 500 on the two vessels.
The medical charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) sent a helicopter to search for further survivors in the lake, which covers 1 440 square kilometres but can double in size during the seasonal rains which are currently lashing western Congo.
”We have a doctor on site flying over the lake determining if there are any more casualties or other boats in trouble,” said Alain Decoux of MSF.
Lake Mai-Ndombe, which means ”black water”, feeds into the river Congo.
The two boats, laden with fish, cocoa and maize as well as passengers, collided near the lakeside settlement of Inongo, according to a resident.
”I’ve seen more than 100 bodies coming in today,” said Jacques Mpongo, a trader in the town. ”The burials are taking place now.”
He said the two boats had been built of wood and were in relatively poor condition, a common feature of ferries and other forms of transport in a country wracked by five years of civil war and decades of misrule.
Inongo residents were helping to bury the dead yesterday, placing two to four people in each grave.
After the first survivor emerged from the water carrying a dead baby, villagers rushed their wooden fishing canoes into high waves to search for other passengers, said Didier Bontange, an MSF worker in Inongo.
Villagers ”did everything they could with what they had”, he added. ”A state-owned rescue boat only arrived hours later. People here are very angry — they’re expressing their indignation at always being forgotten by the authorities.”
President Joseph Kabila’s government reopened the river to commercial traffic in April after it had been closed during the war. The government had feared rebels could use it to launch an attack on Kinshasa.
DRC’s rural residents often use overcrowded, unsafe boats to travel around a country marked by poor roads and expensive flights. There are only a few hundred kilometres of paved roads in a country the size of western Europe. In March another overloaded ferry sank in lake Tanganyika in Congo’s far east, killing 111.
Africa’s worst ferry disaster was on September 26 last year, when Senegal’s state-run ferry, carrying nearly four times its intended capacity, overturned in a gale in the Atlantic, killing 1 863 people. – Guardian Unlimited Â