Eight dead as canoes crushed in dam waters

DIVERS pulled seven bodies out of the Sava River and fought strong currents in Slovenia yesterday to search for five other people still missing after two canoes were crushed running over a dam in south-eastern Slovenia.

Two people managed to swim ashore after their boats crumpled, overturned and capsized but one died in the hospital, raising the death toll to eight, according police spokesman Robert Perc. The second survivor remained hospitalised.

The accident happened late on Thursday, when two large canoes decided to run over a dam under construction near Sevnica, a town 90km south-east of the capital of Ljubljana. At that section, the dam, part of a hydroelectric plant, is built only to about the height of the water.