A ferry carrying up to 300 people sank in a Bangladesh river during a storm yesterday and eight bodies have been recovered so far, police said.
The double-decker MV Lighting Sun was sailing to Dhaka on the Meghna River from the southern Madaripur area when it was swamped by a sudden storm near Chandpur, 170km from the capital.
First reports available from police said eight bodies, including women and children, had been found.
They said villagers and fishermen using motor boats picked up at least 35 people survivors. Another seven were rescued from atop the hull of the upturned ferry, which was floating partly submerged in the river.
Police said a rescue vessel, MV Rustam, left Narayanganj, near Dhaka, on way to Chandpur and was expected to reach there in the afternoon.
"However, it may take longer to arrive at the spot because of rough weather and strong currents in the Meghna," a Narayanganj police officer said.
"The ferry sank in the Meghna's midstream, off the Anandabazar fishing centre, at about 3:30am. The river is very turbulent with strong winds still blowing," said a reporter at the scene.
He quoted a survivor, Liton, saying that the "packed ferry listed on one side and sank minutes after the storm hit."
"I could hear people screaming and chanting 'Allah save us' before I jumped into the water and managed to swim to a nearby char [river island]."
About 400 people were killed and hundreds are unaccounted for after a triple-decker ferry sank in a storm, also in Chandpur district, in July last year.
Impoverished and over-populated Bangladesh has a long history of tragic ferry disasters.
Inland water transport authority officials say about 1,000 people die in ferry accidents in the country every year, but the the number of missing is far more.
Bangladesh is struggling to clean up one of the world's deadliest ferry industries ahead of the annual rainy season next month.
The government has banned night sailing by small ferries and issued warnings to owners of larger vessels not to take on excess cargo and passengers. Listening to weather bulletins is also now mandatory for sailors.
"We are taking extra precautions in the months of May and June -- preceding the rainy season -- when powerful storms often strike," shipping minister Akbar Hossain said in an interview on Friday.
"Safer berths are also being planned at vulnerable sites for sheltering ships during storms," he said.
Low-lying Bangladesh is criss-crossed by thousands of kilometers of waterways that are crucial trade and travel routes for the congested country's 140 million people.
Only a few major bridges provide transport across the several large rivers that bisect the country.
Every wet season, the waterways become menacing torrents and the country is frequently lashed by cyclones that sweep in from the Bay of Bengal.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS