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Death toll rises to 50 in Sudan river boat accident |
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August 26, 2000
KHARTOUM (AP) - Fifty people, many of them school children, are now known to have drowned when a boat taking them across the River Nile capsized in central Sudan, a senior provincial official said on Friday. Younis el-Sharif el-Hassan, governor of the Sinnar state where the accident happened on Wednesday, said that a total of 67 people were on the boat when it capsized in the Blue Nile outside Sinja, a town that is 700 kilometers (477 miles) south of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. "Up to now we could not retrieve the bodies. It is a tragedy". The remaining 17 passengers survived by swimming to the shore, el-Hassan said on state radio Omdurman. The passengers had come from an island where they harvested vegetables ahead of the annual Nile flood, which peaks in the August-September period. The official Sudan News Agency on Thursday put the death toll at 35 and said the boat was apparently overloaded with 30 bags of sweet potatoes and 10 bags of maize. |