Overloaded Indian ferry capsizes

Guwahati: Around 105 people were confirmed dead and almost as many were missing after a river ferry with 350 people aboard broke apart in a storm and sank in northeast India on Monday, police said.

“Rescue workers along with villagers have recovered about 105 bodies from the shores of the river,” P.C. Haloi, police chief of Dhubri district, from where the ferry set out, told AFP. “The fate of around 100 others is not known,” Haloi said.

Some 150 people were either rescued or swam to safety after the double-decker ferry, whose passengers included women and children, sank in the fast-flowing Brahmaputra river in Assam state, police said.

Rescuers were struggling to find survivors but their efforts were hampered by high winds, torrential rains and darkness, officials said.

People who were travelling on the top level were rescued or swam to safety, officials said.

People were sitting on the roof of the ferry carrying mainly local farmers and their families when it tipped over in a storm on a one-km-wide stretch of the Brahmaputra river in a remote region of the state, close to China and Bangladesh, police said.

"Our rescue efforts have been hampered by bad weather, it is still raining heavily and there is almost zero visibility in the area," P.C. Saloi, a police officer at the scene, told Reuters.

Witnesses told police the vessel was old and broke in two after capsizing in the swollen river, one of Asia's largest. Smaller boats often get into trouble on the river, but the ferry was the largest to sink in recent years.

The boat was overloaded with people and sacks of rice, among other goods, and carried no lifeboats or life jackets, the police officer said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who represents Assam in the upper house of parliament, said he was "shocked and grieved" to know of the accident.

Rescue workers said they had contacted colleagues downstream in Bangladesh to help in the search for survivors.