MOSUL – Death toll from the capsized overloaded ferry in Iraq has risen to 100, the Radio Pakistan reported.
Iraq’s prime minister decreed three days of national mourning after he visited the site of a riverboat accident in the Tigris river near Mosul city on Thursday.
The ferry said to have been overloaded, capsized with more than one hundred people on it, many of them women and children who had been celebrating the Persian new year of Nawroz and Mother’s Day.
Most of the casualties on the ferry were women and children who could not swim.
An Interior Ministry official said that search operations are still underway adding that the ferry sank because of a technical problem and that there weren’t many boats in the area to rescue people.
Iraq´s justice ministry said it had ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and banned the owners of the vessel and the tourist site from leaving the country.
The authorities had warned people to be cautious after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise.
