DAKAR, Sept 27 (AFP) - At least 41 people died when an
overcrowded Senegalese passenger ferry carrying nearly 800 people
sank overnight off the Gambian coast, Senegal's Prime Minister Mame
Madior Boye said Friday.
Thirty-two survivors were known to have been plucked out of the
water, she added. The ferry, the Joola, had been sailing from the
Senegalese province of Casamance to Dakar.
A Senegalese ship owner queried by a private radio station said
he understood that rescue boats had picked up 50 people. According
to various sources, about 80 people in all appeared to have been
rescued.
The Joola was equipped to carry a maximum of about 550
passengers, according to harbour staff in Dakar and Casamance.
Boye said that 796 people were listed as being on board when
"the boat capsized, rolling over onto its side under the combined
impact of strong gusts of wind and rain."
"For the moment, the state of the ship has not been called into
question," the prime minister added, referring to the seaworthiness
of the ferry. Some sources have said, in unconfirmed reports, that
it may have sunk because of engine problems.
The Joola was under way from the main town in Casamance,
Ziguinchor, to Dakar when it went down in a severe storm off the
Gambia at around 11:00 pm (2300 GMT) on Thursday night, according to
a Senegalese state radio report.
Families of passengers aboard the boat gathered Friday at Dakar
port, as well as at the docks in Ziguinchor, many of them weeping,
AFP journalists reported.
Security forces at the port in Dakar had to put up barriers to
hold back anguished and angry people.
Several family members who had gathered there said transport
officials had put the Joola back into service prematurely, after
taking it off the line for more than a year for repairs.
"The authorities think only of money. They could have thrown
luggage overboard and saved people," somebody in the crowd said.
"I'm really worried, my family was on board," said a young
official who works in the ministry of transport.
Several dozen women from the Joola ethnic group, the main
community in Casamance, were sadly singing and dancing at the port.
Gambian and Senegalese naval and civilian boats have launched a
joint rescue operation, the Gambian navy announced.
Casamance lies to the south of the rest of Senegal and is
largely cut off from it by the Gambia, a narrow strip of a country
straddling the river of the same name.
Boye and other Senegalese government members were due Friday to
go to the port in Dakar. The government has launched an emergency
rescue plan and declared three days of national mourning in the wake
of the tragedy.
The Joola went back into service after repairs on September 10.
The transport and armed forces ministers were on board for that
voyage, with a full complement of passengers and amid much
publicity.
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