About 40 people were feared dead on Tuesday after a ferry sank on stormy Lake Albert near Uganda’s border with Congo, a senior police officer said on Tuesday.
A boat crammed with about 80 passengers and piles of goods capsized on Monday just south of Panyimur landing site, about 280km northwest of Kampala, said regional police commander Grace Turyagumanawe.
Rescuers plucked 37 survivors from the water, said Simon Peter Okoshi, deputy commander of the police marine unit. He said 19 bodies had been recovered by Tuesday afternoon.
”We cannot ascertain whether the rest of the people who were on the boat are alive,” Okoshi said.
Turyagumanawe said most of the people aboard were traders.
”The boat was overloaded, with little visibility and the waters were rough,” he said in a mobile-phone interview.
Dozens of people perish on Ugandan lakes every year in incidents blamed on bad weather and overloading.
Effective policing of traffic on Ugandan waters to minimise accidents is nearly impossible due to the existence of a small, under-equipped and undermanned police marine force. — Sapa-DPA