Democratic Republic of Congo: more than 100 dead and missing in shipwreck

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More than a hundred people have died or are missing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the sinking of a makeshift boat on the Congo River, on the night of Monday to Tuesday, we learned from the authorities on Saturday. provincial.

A dramatic shipwreck on the river Congo. More than a hundred people, traveling in a makeshift boat, have died or are missing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, provincial authorities announced on Saturday, October 9, five days after the terrible accident.

Fifty-one body had been recovered Friday evening, said by telephone Nestor Magbado, deputy spokesperson for the governor of the province of Mongala (north-west), estimating at 69 the number of missing. There were 39 survivors, he added.

In the absence of a passenger manifesto, the number of missing is an estimate, he added, given the number of people that the boat concerned could contain.

It was not a boat as such, but nine motorized canoes connected to each other, said Nestor Magbado. “The overload aggravated by the bad weather”, in the middle of the night, could explain the sinking, according to him.

Information on the extent of the accident was only relayed on Friday evening by the Congolese media and confirmed to AFP on Saturday morning by the provincial authorities. According to Nestor Magbado, the province informed Kinshasa of the sinking just after the event, “but we had reservations on the balance sheet, the time to gather all the elements”, he explained.

The search continues to recover other bodies, added the spokesperson, noting that the hope of finding other survivors “is dwindling day by day”.

A three-day provincial mourning will be observed from next Monday.

With AFP