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| Sunday, 13 July 2003 |
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World | Today's Top Story |  |
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Known death toll mounts to 61 from sunken Bangladesh ferry by Golam Tahaboor, The known death toll in Bangladesh's latest ferry disaster rose to 61 Saturday with 35 more decomposing bodies recovered amid fading hopes of finding the vessel three days after it sank leaving hundreds missing. Police in the coastal Barisal and Bhola districts reported 33 more bodies retrieved from up to five locations more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) down the Meghna river. The bodies included those of three women and two children, said a senior police official, who added that more bodies may have swept down to the Bay of Bengal unnoticed. Police in Barisal said 16 bodies were recovered at Rukunuddin, nine from Hizla, five from Mehndiganj and three in Borhanuddin. Twenty-six bodies had been accounted for as of Friday. Upstream at the river port town Chandpur where the overcrowded ferry sank Tuesday night, rescuers Saturday afternoon picked up two bodies from near the crash site, district crisis centre official Mohammad Humayun told AFP by telephone. He said the bodies were badly decomposed, but would be brought to shore nonetheless for possible identification. Both were of middle-aged men. Magistrate Selina Parvez said that despite fresh rains early Saturday, efforts to locate the sunken vessel were continuing, though without any luck so far. In Barisal, regional police chief Golam Mostafa said as most of the bodies coming out of the river were so badly decomposed that rescuers and fishermen failed to retrieve what they saw in the sea. There remains no definitive toll for the sunken MV Nasrin-1, which had a capacity of 429 but which officials said was overcrowded. Some 200 people were rescued or swam safely to shore, according to officials. One Dhaka daily earlier speculated up to 1,000 people might have perished in what would be one of the most deadly in a long history of ferry disasters in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi ferries rarely issue tickets or keep lists of passengers. Several rescue and naval ships were at the site but rain and severe whirlpools in the river continued to hamper attempts to trace the ferry, believed to be lying some 60 metres (200 feet) underwater near Chandpur, about 43 kilometres (27 miles) southeast of Dhaka. It sank at the confluence of the Meghna, Padma and Dakatia rivers, a dangerous point for ferry operations during the monsoon. Mahbubur Rashid, a naval lieutenant commander, said currents at the capsize site were measured at six knot, three-times the maximum speed recorded elsewhere in Bangladesh. River officials fear the wreckage could have been buried under sand or swept down towards the sea. Even if the remains of the boat are finally located, it was uncertain it could be salvaged from the water. The snail-like rescue effort has infuriated relatives of the missing, most of whom by Friday had ended a two-day vigil waiting for survivors. Hundreds of friends and relatives had packed into the Chandpur ferry terminal but left dejected as the chances of finding survivors grew remote. More than 3,000 people have died in some 260 ferry accidents in Bangladesh since 1977. Officials recalled a ferry went down at the same site in 1994, killing more than 150 passengers. The wreckage of the boat was never retrieved. |
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