Dozens of more victims have been recovered from apassenger ferry that capsized Thursday afternoon on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. The death toll has risen to 86.
The privately owned newspaper The Citizen posted the new casualty numbers on its website Friday. It cited figures from John Mongella, regional commissioner.Mongella said Thursday that 37 people had been rescued but that some were in “a very bad condition.”
He would not speculateon how many people were on the ferry, but it is not uncommon for ferries that ply the region’s vast lakes to carry hundreds of passengers at a time.
According to Tanzanian government records, 894 people died when the MV Bukoba capsized on Lake Victoria in May 1996.
More recently, 200 people were confirmed dead when the MV Spice Islander I sank off the coast ofthe archipelago of Zanzibar in 2011. More than 1,000 were reported missing.