200 Feared Dead After Ferry Sinks

Seventy-nine people are confirmed dead and another 120 are feared drowned after a ferry capsized and sank during a storm in Bangladesh, rescue officials said yesterday.

The double-decker Maharaj was on its way to the eastern town of Chandpur when it went down in the Buriganga river just outside the capital, Dhaka, in strong winds on Saturday night.

Local administrators said the ship had been carrying more than 200 people.

Reports say the Maharaj was registered as having 167 people on board, but the actual number of passengers could be higher because ferries in Bangladesh are often overcrowded.

Hundreds of relatives and local people gathered near the scene to await news. At one stage, police used batons to disperse mourning relatives who thronged the water's edge, angry at the slow pace of the rescue.

"Seventy-nine bodies have been found so far and the search for more is continuing. A second rescue vessel is coming to join efforts to salvage the ferry," Saiful Haque Khan, a director of Bangladesh inland water transport authority, told Reuters.

Mahbubur Rahman, an area government administrator, said 37 bodies were taken from the river, while divers recovered the rest from the sunken vessel. Many of those who lost their lives appeared to be Muslims who had been attending the Ashura religious festival.

Jasim Uddin, an auto-rickshaw driver who was on his way back from religious festivities in Dhaka, was rescued by a fishing boat but his daughter and a nephew died. According to Associated Press, his wife, a son and four other relatives travelling with him are missing.

Officials offered little hope of finding anybody else alive and said most of the passengers and crew were likely to be dead.

Authorities have ordered an investigation into the accident. Ferries are a common means of transport in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest nations, which lies in a delta crisscrossed by scores of rivers and tributaries flowing into the Bay of Bengal.