At least 140 people have died after an ferry overturned in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a local official said on Thursday.
There were conflicting reports about how many people have survived.
The boat overturned on Wednesday after hitting a sandbank on the Kasai River, a tributary of the Congo River, in Bandundu province in the west of the vast Central African country.
A local official in the Bandundu province governor’s office said that at least 140 people had died.
“I can confirm the accident,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
“We’re currently in a crisis meeting,” he added.
Communications Minister Lambert Mende said he was aware of “80 dead and 76 survivors” according to what he said was the passenger
list.
“Since there were certainly clandestine passengers, other people will have fallen into the water,” said Mende. But they were still trying to find more survivors.
Officially, the boat was listed as taking about 180 passengers.
But he added: “There are too many people who are in the habit of travelling clandestinely,” which meant that the death toll might rise.
The accident happened when the boat struck a sandbank at Mangutuka, on the outskirts of Bandundu, said Mende.
Another local source reached by Agence France-Presse earlier said that only two children had survived the tragedy.
The boat was carrying an unspecified number of passengers and goods from Mushie, about 30km from Bandundu, the province’s chief town.
Neither the UN mission for the stabilisation of the DRC (Monusco) nor the international Red Cross had any details of the shipwreck.
River transport is widely used throughout DRC, where the numerous waterways include the 4 700km long Congo River, which traverses seven of the 11 provinces of the country.
Scores of people are killed each year in river disasters usually involving overcrowded boats.
In November last year, at least 73 people died when two linked barges sank on Mai-Ndombe lake in Bandundu province. In September 2009, more than 250 people died in three boat accidents on
Congolese waterways.
In one of the worst incidents of recent years, some 200 people were reported missing after a fire broke out on a ferry on the Congo River in the northern Equateur province in 2004. The boat sank with almost 500 people on board.
Apart from overcrowding, other causes of accidents are the bad signposting of navigable channels, the absence of signal lights on boats and inexperienced pilots. Most vessels fail to meet basic safety requirements, including carrying life jackets and lifebelts. – AFP