102 missing as Russian river boat sinks

EMERGENCY officials say that 102 people, including dozens of children, are missing and at least one is dead after a passenger boat with more than 180 people on board sank in the Volga River yesterday.

The double-decker vessel went down 3km away from the nearest bank in the giant Kuibyshev reservoir on the Volga River, 750km east of Moscow, the Tatarstan region emergency ministry said. The depth at the site was 20 metres (65.62 feet), it said.

The spokeswoman for Emergencies Ministry in Moscow, Irina Andrianova said there were 135 passengers and 47 crew on board when the boat went down.