At least 86 people have been confirmed dead, almost doubling the total which was initially at 44, this happened in Dar es Salaam after a ferry capsized. A team of rescuers resumed searching early on Friday for hundreds who are still missing, a day after the ferry sank in Lake Victoria, Tanzanian police said.
The MV Nyerere was estimated to be carrying more than 300 people when it went down on Thursday afternoon. The ferry capsized just a few metres from the dock on Ukwerewe, the lake’s biggest island in Tanzania.
So far, a total of 37 people have been rescued from the sea, while the death toll has been confirmed at 86, Jonathan Shana, the regional police commander for Mwanza, a port on the southern shore of the lake, told Reuters by phone on Friday. It is not yet clear how many people were on the ferry at the time when it capsized since the crew as well as the equipment had been lost.
Tanzania has been hit by several major ferry disasters in the past. At least 500 people were killed when a ferry capsized in Lake Victoria in 1996. In 2012, 145 people died when a ferry sank off the shore of Tanzania’s Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar.
