Tanzanian Ferry Capsizes; 500 Aboard Feared Dead

About 500 passengers, many of them teenagers, drowned Tuesday after a ferry hit a rock and capsized in Lake Victoria, state-run radio and journalists said.

Passing ships pulled 81 survivors from the water and recovered 21 bodies after the ferry sank 30 miles northwest of the Tanzanian lake port of Mwanza, Radio Tanzania said.

“This is not an ordinary tragedy--it is a national tragedy,” President Benjamin Mkapa said in a radio broadcast. He declared three days of mourning and said he will go to Mwanza today.

A total of 441 passengers were listed as being aboard the ferry, Mkapa said. But survivors and Radio Tanzania put the number of passengers at 600. Many of those aboard the ship were teenage students returning home at the end of the school term, survivors said.

One man identified only as Chacha told Radio Tanzania that the ship was overcrowded. “There was no proper procedure for ticketing,” he said.

The ferry was traveling southeast from Bukoba to Mwanza, about 110 miles away. Journalists in Mwanza said the ferry struck a rock before it sank.

Mwanza is Tanzania’s most important port on Lake Victoria, handling the cotton, tea and coffee grown in the fertile western part of the country.

The ferry, the MV Bukoba, is owned and operated by the state Tanzania Railways Corp., which sent the MV Victoria, the largest steamer on the huge lake, and other vessels to the rescue, Radio Tanzania said.

Since 1977, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have operated separate ferry services on Lake Victoria with only haphazard rescue cooperation.

Lake Victoria is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake after Lake Superior.