Tanzania: Over 200 bodies recovered from ferry

A government official says more than 200 bodies have been recovered after an overloaded ferry sank off the Tanzania coast.

Quote :

Mohammed Aboud Mohammed said Sunday that 192 bodies had been claimed by relatives and 28 more were awaiting identification. The bodies have been taken to a sports field, where imams are saying prayers and the bodies are being washed and wrapped in white according to Islamic custom.

Weeping families walked among them looking for their families.

The MV Spice Islander sank in an area of deep sea and strong currents in the early hours of Saturday with hundreds more people aboard than its official capacity of 600.

The number of total passengers is still unclear and officials expect the death toll to rise.

Second article

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Passengers on the aging, crowded boat headed for one of Tanzania's top tourist destinations said they realized something was wrong when the overnight ferry began to list from side to side.

Then water rushed through and killed the engines, sending the M.V. Spice Islanders upside down and pitching hundreds of people into the deep sea early Saturday morning. A witness counted nearly 200 bodies, and the president of the nearby island of Zanzibar said more than 570 people were rescued, suggesting the boat was overloaded. Some survivors said the boat's capacity was about 600.

Quote :

Dozens of Tanzanians on the island of Zanzibar who spoke to The Associated Press expressed anger that the boat had been allowed to leave port at all and asserted it was overloaded. Residents of Stone Town said they had frequently referred to the vessel as "a disaster waiting to happen." Survivor Abdullah Saied said some passengers had refused to board the boat, saying it was too full, as it left the mainland port of Dar es Salaam for Pemba Island, north of Zanzibar.

At 1 a.m. on Saturday, it sank in an area with heavy currents in deep sea between mainland Tanzania and Pemba Island. Boats frequently traverse the route, but travel times vary depending on the vessel.

I'm not being mean but, that's third-world travel for you. And even second-world. And that's not a joke. They just don't have the money to keep their vehicles in decent condition. Hell, most of their airplanes and boats are sold to them second-hand by our big airplane companies.

Or third-hand, from the people who are done with the second-hand. Or fourth-hand, from the people who are done with third-hands. Or, I'm not joking, some wild combination of them all - if it can still roll, it's roadworthy. The average oil-fuelled car in the third-world would be classed by us as "Scrap-Metal with wheels." There's a demotivational poster about it somewhere.

But seriously, that's absolutely tragic.