DHAKA (APP) – At least 41 people died, including 11 children and 7 women, in Bangladesh on Sunday when a passenger ferry capsized after colliding with a trawler on Padma river with more than 100 people aboard, police said.
Rescuers managed to save at least 50 passengers and were still searching for more survivors, regional police official Bidhan Tripura told Reuters.
Low-lying Bangladesh, with extensive inland waterways and slack safety standards, suffers regular ferry disasters, with deaths sometimes running into the hundreds.
The 41 bodies retrieved so far from the water include a baby, Tripura said. Police have seized the trawler and arrested two of its crew, he said.
Another police team, assisted by firemen and the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, is trying to salvage the ferry, he said.
Divers were also trying to retrieve any bodies trapped inside the vessel, he said.
The ferry was heading to Paturia from Daulatdia in Rajbari, located on the opposite bank of the river and 136 kilometres northwest of Dhaka. A similar accident on February 13 killed at least seven passengers in southern Bangladesh.
Boat and ferry accidents due to poor safety standards and overloading are common in Bangladesh, which is criss-crossed by a network of 230 rivers.
Boat owners often ignore warnings and overload ferries with two to three times more passengers than their capacity.
Experts say most of the 2,000 large and medium-sized ferries which ply the rivers are built in local dockyards without proper safety checks.
A similar incident in August 2014 had claimed the lives of several people when a ferry carrying morethan 200 passengers capsized in the Padma River.
Another similar mishap had occurred in May 2014.
