More than 1,000 armed police officers have been dispatched to the site where a passenger ship carrying 458 people sank in the Yangtze River in central Hubei Province on Monday night.

Equipped with 40 inflatable boats, the officers from the Hubei Armed Police Corps have been conducting rescue work since Tuesday morning.

The ship, named Dongfangzhixing, or Eastern Star, sank at around 9:28 p.m. after being caught in a cyclone in the Jianli section of the Yangtze River, according to the Yangtze River navigation administration.

Carrying 405 passengers, five travel agency workers and 47 crew members, the ship was heading from Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, to southwest China's Chongqing city.