300 Feared Dead in River Barge Disaster in Zambia

A river barge crowded with passengers hit a sandbar while the pilot apparently was asleep and the vessel sank, drowning 23 people and leaving more than 300 others missing and feared dead, Zambian police said Monday.

The police chief for Luapula Province, Baldwin Kaila, told reporters by telephone that the accident occurred early Sunday on the Luapula River, which forms the frontier between Zambia and Zaire.

Kaila said the barge, a Zairean vessel named Maria that was heavily laden with passengers and luggage, struck a sandbar and went down near Katabulwe Harbor, about 400 miles north of Lusaka in a remote border region.

Because of poor communications, details of the accident were not available until Monday, the Luapula police chief said.

He added that of the estimated 470 Zaireans and Zambians traveling on the barge, more than 300 were still missing and believed drowned. So far, only 23 bodies had been recovered and a total of 80 people had survived.

The police chief said the Zairean pilot of the barge apparently was sleeping when he hit the sandbar. He said the pilot had surrendered to Zambian authorities.

The barge was between the villages of Mpweto and Kasenga when it sank.

Kaila said that most of those who survived were on the top deck and managed to swim to safety.

The search was continuing for missing passengers but was hampered by poor communications and the fact that the accident site was so remote, Kaila said.

He added that the estimate of the number of passengers on the barge was provided by the pilot.

The biggest shipping disaster in recent years was the sinking of a Soviet liner in September of last year with the loss of nearly 400 lives. More than 800 people were rescued after the Admiral Nakhimov collided with a freighter in the Black Sea.