At least 19 people have died after strong winds caused a boat to overturn on Lake Mai-Ndombe in western Democratic Republic of Congo, the provincial governor said on Saturday.
The vessel left the village of Kiri and was heading toward the capital, Kinshasa, when it capsized on Thursday night, according to local authorities and civil society representatives.
River and lake boats are the primary means of transport in much of rural Congo, but many are old, poorly maintained and routinely overloaded, making deadly accidents common.
“Yesterday we recovered nine bodies, and today ten more were pulled from the water, bringing the total to 19 dead and 82 survivors,” said Mai-Ndombe provincial governor Nkoso Kevani Lebon. He added that he did not yet know how many people remained missing.
“The cause of the incident was a violent wind on the lake that disabled one of the boat’s two engines, causing it to capsize,” he told Reuters.
Another government official, Freddy Bonzeke Iliki, said the boat had been carrying at least 200 passengers and that search operations for additional victims were still underway.
“It is following incidents like these that we discover regulations on tonnage and passenger capacity were not being respected,” said Iliki, a national representative for the Mushie territory in Mai-Ndombe province.
He said he had previously proposed banning makeshift wooden boats on Lake Mai-Ndombe, but the measure was never implemented.
Around 200 people were killed in two separate river boat disasters elsewhere in Congo in September.