Around 105 people were confirmed dead and almost as many missing after a river ferry with 350 people on board broke apart in a storm and sank in northeast India on Monday, police said.
I could see people being swept away as the river current was very strong
“Rescue workers along with villagers have recovered about 105 bodies from the shores of the river. The fate of around 100 others is not known,” P.C. Haloi, police chief of Dhubri district, where the disaster occurred, told AFP.
Some 150 people were either rescued or swam to safety after the double-decker ferry, whose passengers included women and children, sank in the fast-flowing Brahmaputra river in Assam state. Rescuers, including army units, rushed to the scene in a desperate bid to find survivors but their efforts were hampered by high winds, torrential rains and darkness.
Rahul Karmakar, who witnessed the sinking, told AFP: “I could see people being swept away as the river current was very strong.”
He added that “chances of survival seem to be remote” in the river, swollen by heavy rains.
The death toll from the ferry sinking could be one of the worst of recent years in South Asia, where such disasters are common due to lax safety standards and overloading.
Local fishermen who live with their families in tiny hamlets stretching along the Brahmaputra river battled to find survivors as night fell.
Strong winds had uprooted trees, blocking roads leading to the disaster site and preventing some rescue teams from reaching the area, said officials in Assam’s main commercial city Guwahati.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the sinking a “tragedy” and said he had pledged all possible assistance to the state government in the search.
“There were about 350 people on board when a storm split the steamer into two,” Assam state police chief J.N. Choudhury said.
The boat was on its way from Dhubri to the adjoining district of Fakirganj when the accident occurred in late afternoon, police said. More rain was forecast for today for the area.
In one of the last major ferry disasters in India, at least 79 Muslim pilgrims drowned when an overcrowded boat carrying 150 people sank in the eastern state of West Bengal in October 2010.