26 dead after Bangla ferry collision
Published on: Tuesday, April 06, 2021
By: AFP
Divers carry a dead body recovered from the capsized boat in Shitalakshya River, in Narayanganj.
NARAYANGANJ: At least 26 people died after a small ferry packed with up to 50 passengers sank having collided with another boat in Bangladesh, officials said.The vessel sank in the Shitalakhsya river around 6:00 pm after leaving the central industrial city of Narayanganj, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the capital Dhaka, for the nearby district of Munshiganj, officials told AFP.
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A local police inspector said the ferry was packed with passengers rushing to leave Narayanganj after the government confirmed a seven-day lockdown across the country from Monday to combat the recent rise in Covid-19 cases.
The initial death toll stood at five but to 26 on Monday after rescuers pulled the vessel out of the water and found more bodies inside.
The sunken ferry was extracted from the heavily polluted Shitalakshya River in the central district of Narayanganj as hundreds of onlookers and relatives of the missing watched from the shore.
“We have found 21 bodies today after the ship was pulled out of the water,” local official Mustain Billah told AFP.
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The one-and-a-half storey Sabit Al Hasan sank after it collided with a bigger cargo vessel on Sunday.
Billah said the ship was carrying at least 46 people when it left.
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“Some 20 people swam to safety after the vessel sank,” he told AFP, adding several people could still be missing. “We have ordered a probe into the accident,” he said.
Local police chief Dipak Saha said rescue efforts were hampered for hours by a powerful storm that hit after the accident.
Under the lockdown, all domestic travel services—including buses, ferries, trains and flights—will be suspended from Monday.
Shops and malls will be shut for a week and a night curfew in effect.
Public and private sector businesses were told to only have a skeleton crew in their offices.
Ferry accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers.
Millions of people are heavily reliant on ferries for transport, particularly in the country’s southern coastal region, but the vessels have a poor safety record.
Experts blame poor maintenance, lax safety standards at shipyards and overcrowding for many of the accidents.
In June last year, a ferry sank in Dhaka after it was hit from behind by another ferry, killing at least 32 people.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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