A boat capsized in Congo\u2019s northwest killing at least 27 people, and more than 70 others were missing, a senior government official said Saturday as rescuers searched frantically for survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The locally made boat capsized late Friday in the city of Mbandaka in Equateur Province as it transported more than 100 passengers along the Congo River to the town of Bolomba, according to Taylor Nganzi, deputy provincial governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlready 27 bodies of victims have been removed from the waters (and) transported to the morgue of the general hospital in Mbandaka,\u201d said Nganzi, adding that an investigation to find out the cause of the accident had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The New Civil Society of Congo, a local civil society group, said 49 people died in the accident, which it said occurred after an engine failure. \u201cEverything started to sink,\u201d Jean-Pierre Wangela, president of the group, told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The contradictory death tolls, which is common in such incidents in Congo, could not immediately be reconciled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Volunteers joined rescuers in the search for survivors and for bodies, while families mourned loved ones who were among the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are supervising the search for bodies with the river services and accompanied by the victims\u2019 families,\u201d said Nganzi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boat accidents are common on the Congo River and on the nation\u2019s lakes because of the prevalent use of makeshift boats that are often overloaded. The majority of the population in the country\u2019s northwest use the rivers to travel because of a lack of good roads and because it is a less expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Congolese government had banned night travel throughout the country to avoid accidents, although many defy the directive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A boat capsized in Congo\u2019s northwest killing at least 27 people, and more than 70 others were missing, a senior government official said Saturday as rescuers searched frantically for survivors. The locally made boat capsized late Friday in the city of Mbandaka in Equateur Province as it transported more than 100 passengers along the Congo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":34308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461,12],"tags":[5144,5777,9331,4024,596,7234,5241,6738,2264,6825,10197,9515,10454,11743,6831,9374,3805,10722,9110,10402,6264,11906,6584,9539,594],"class_list":["post-38783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news","tag-accident","tag-banned","tag-city","tag-common","tag-congo","tag-death","tag-died","tag-families","tag-government","tag-hospital","tag-investigation","tag-killed","tag-killing","tag-majority","tag-missing","tag-population","tag-president","tag-removed","tag-river","tag-sink","tag-survivors","tag-the-general","tag-travel","tag-victims","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38785,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38783\/revisions\/38785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}