Zimbabwe Lake Kariba ferry disaster death toll rises to 84 as search continues

Lake Kariba

By Mary Taruvinga

Harare – The death toll after an overloaded government ferry capsized on Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba has risen to 84 after more bodies were retrieved on Sunday, the police said.

The passenger ferry, a vital means of transport for rural villagers, overturned on Tuesday in choppy waters on the vast lake on the border with Zambia.

The police “reports that the death toll is now 84 after the recovery of four bodies from the lake this afternoon”, a statement said.

“The police confirm that search efforts are still underway in a bid to recover victims identified as missing,” it said.

Officials said earlier in the week the boat was authorised to carry 90 people, but had 114 adults, five crew members and an unspecified number of children onboard.

The civil protection unit said on Wednesday that 77 people had been rescued.

With the 84 bodies police said they had recovered, this would mean the vessel was carrying at least 161 people.

The ferry was a vital link for rural communities living around the lake to the town of Kariba, nearly 280 kilometres (175 miles) northwest of the capital Harare.

Search teams recovered 25 bodies on Saturday, taking the toll to 72.

Police involved in the retrieval operations said they were confident that all the bodies would eventually surface, with an unknown number of people missing.

Officials have not said how many children were among the dead. Many of the adults on the vessel were believed to be villagers and fish traders.

‘Screaming, vomiting’ 

A survivor told AFP reporters on Thursday that passengers had told the captain of their alarm in the rough water and with the boat “simply overloaded”, but he ignored them.

“I have been using the same ferry for more than five years, but this time it was different. There were so many drums of diesel, groceries and other luggage on board,” said Itayi Marumisa, from Mola village.

“The life jackets were buried under the luggage, and not more than 30 people managed to get them,” said the trader, aged in her 40s.

“We could sense that we were in danger,” she said. Luggage was slipping overboard and, “Children were screaming and most of the passengers were vomiting, but the captain did not seem to care.”

The government agency running the vessel “failed to do its due diligence,” she said. “We demand justice and compensation for the trauma they have caused us and for everything we lost.”

Hundreds of people gathered at the district hospital in Kariba over the weekend to identify and search for the bodies of their relatives and loved ones, reports said.

Lake Kariba straddles the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia and is the world’s largest man-made lake by volume.

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