At least 36 people have been missing and feared drowned after a cargo and passenger ship sank on the Congo River in the Kinshasa region, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, reported Africa News.
The boat, which departed from the province of Mai-Ndombe, province located southwest of the city of Kinshasa, sank overnight on Sunday in Maluku commune, about 100km (62 miles) from the centre of the city.
According to police authorities, 76 people survived the incident. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
“The cause of the accident is not yet known,” police spokesman Colonel Pierrot-Rombaut Mwanamputu told AFP news agency.
The ship involved in the accident was a “baleiniere,” which is French for “whaler.” They are commonly-used, flat-bottomed boats measuring between 15 to 30 meters (50 to 100 feet) long by 2 to 6 meters wide.
The DRC, a 2.3 million square kilometer country in Central Africa, has very few good roads. Travel is often done on Congo’s tributaries and lakes.
Boat accidents are common in central Africa, mainly due to unmarked waterways, overloading, and dilapidated vessels. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of accidents, passengers are not equipped with life jackets and many cannot swim.
In related news, DRC is currently facing a massive Ebola outbreak. The country’s Health Ministry on Monday said the death toll from Ebola has risen to 1,984 since its outbreak in July 2018.
Among 3,128 cases of reported hemorrhagic fever, some 3,017 were confirmed to be Ebola cases. 948 have recovered from the virus, while nearly 85 people are currently being treated for the disease.
