Update: 13 Died in Yangtze River ShipwreckMore than 140 people were still missing after an overloaded passenger ferry flipped over in a fast-flowing stretch of the Yangtze River on Thursday.The vessel was carrying an estimated 200 day-trippers to a country fair, according to report by our correspondent. It said 51 passengers had been rescued by 19:30 Thursday and 13 bodies had been pulled from the waters. All those aboard were tossed into the raging waters after the vessel capsized in the southwestern province of Sichuan. The overturned boat was dragged several kms down the river by the force of the current, the report said. Rescuers workers were scouring the river banks in a desperate search for more survivors. The ferry was owned by a farmer who bought it from a steamship company. None of the passengers had been issued tickets for the voyage, so there was no record of the exact number of people on board. The mighty Yangtze is one of the world's most treacherous waterways, narrowing in places into surging torrents that race between jagged rocks. It is also a major transport artery carrying cargoes and migrant workers from the western interior to eastern cities as far as Shanghai on the coast. Passenger ferries are often overloaded and accidents are rising, although relatively few are on the scale of Thursday's tragedy, which occurred in the early morning near the city of Luzhou. In November last year, 280 people were drowned when a ferry caught fire and capsized in freezing conditions off the coast of Shandong in one of China's worst shipping disasters in recent years. |
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