In a rather tragic accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least 150 people are feared dead after a boat they were travelling sunk in a lake.
According to a witness, three bodies had been recovered by Tuesday, 33 people had been rescued and another 150 passengers were missing following the eastern Congo shipwreck.
“I am very saddened by the shipwreck of a pirogue on (Monday) April 15 on Lake Kivu. The provisional toll is 150 people missing,” President Felix Tshisekedi posted on Twitter.
Deadly boat accidents are common in Congo, a vast, forested country which has few roads outside of major towns and is carved up by a network of rivers that drain the Congo Basin. For most people these rivers are the only means of travelling over long distances.
In 2015, up to 100 people were feared missing after two boats collided on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the World Health Organization said.
Eugene Kabambi, a WHO spokesman in the country’s capital, Kinshasa, told CNN that the wreck occurred at a resort downstream of the town of Kwamouth, when an overloaded barge en route to Inongo collided with a boat carrying 150 people.
In July 2011, over 100 people were killed after two boats collided on on a river in the Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Two months earlier, then Congo President Joseph Kabila had sacked his Transport Minister after a series of boat accidents killed more than 100 people.