Dozens more bodies were recovered after the sinking of a ferry carrying hundreds of people in Tanzania, taking the death toll up to 86, the privately owned The Citizen newspaper said on its website on Friday.
Initial estimates suggested that the MV Nyerere was carrying more than 300 people when it went down on Thursday afternoon, just a few metres from the dock on Ukerewe, the lake’s biggest island, which is part of Tanzania.
The precise number of those aboard the ferry when it capsized was hard to establish since crew and equipment had been lost, officials said on Thursday.
Tanzania has been hit by several major ferry disasters over the years. At least 500 people were killed when a ferry capsized in Lake Victoria in 1996. In 2012, 145 people died when a ferry sank off the shore of Tanzania’s Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar.
