Four days after a serious boat accident in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 29 people have been recovered. Fifteen bodies were discovered at a Kiwu beach on Rwanda, AFP forces said. A further 14 bodies were recovered on the Congolese shore, according to a local official.
The boat had landed in the city of Goma in the north of the lake during the night of Tuesday and was on its way to Kalehe in western Congo when it capsized. Since then, the Red Cross in Rwanda has been searching for victims of the disaster.
There are also contradictory indications of how many people were on the boat. The official passenger list recorded 49 adults and seven children. Conversely, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi spoke of 142 mourning families.
In the DR Congo there are always boat accidents with many fatalities. Reasons are usually the hapless Überfrachtung of the obsolete vehicles and the lack of lifejackets. Last September, the sinking of a ship on the Mongala River killed at least 27 people. In May, fifty fatalities were recovered following a shipwreck on the Momboyo River.
The Kivusee is about five times the size of Lake Constance and separates Congo from Rwanda. On the lake many passenger boats, which connect, among other things, the city of Goma at the northern end with the southern city of Bukavu.