160 bodies recovered in Congo ferry crash

SEARCH teams have recovered the bodies of 160 people killed when two ferries collided in a storm on a Congo River tributary and were searching yesterday for more than 100 others still missing, authorities said.

Of the roughly 500 on board the ferries, 222 are known to have survived the collision, said Catherine Nzuzi, Congo's minister of humanitarian affairs.

The disaster happened on Tuesday evening near Inongo, a town on an offshoot of the vast Central African nation's main inland waterway, the Congo River.

News reached the riverside capital, Kinshasa, 300 miles away, only late Wednesday. Authorities said both ferries were overloaded, but added that bad weather was the main cause of the accident.

"There was a violent storm that provoked the collision," Ms Nzuzi said.

Residents of the town of Inongo were helping bury the dead in mass graves, authorities said.

Congo's government reopened the Congo River to commercial traffic in April after closing it during the country's nearly five-year war, fearing rebels could use it to move on Kinshasa.

Africa's impoverished residents often use overcrowded, unsafe boats to travel around a continent marked by poor roads and expensive flights.

Africa's worst-ever ferry accident came on Sept 26, 2002, when Senegal's state-run ferry carrying nearly four times its intended capacity overturned in a gale in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 60 survived and 1,863 perished when the MS Joola capsized.