About 100 people were missing after a tourist boat sank in Russia’s Volga river yesterday, killing at least one person, emergency services officials said.
A survivor said the two-decked, 56-year-old riverboat sank fast in a thunderstorm after listing on to its side and that many were dead, Interfax news agency reported.
Rescuers searched choppy waters in a broad stretch of the river as daylight faded and tearful survivors, rescued by a passing craft, greeted anxious relatives on shore.
The chances of finding more survivors were “very small”, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said last night.
The boat was heading to the Tatarstan regional capital, Kazan, 800km east of Moscow, when it sank about 3km from shore in 20m of water, the ministry’s regional branch said.
The boat “leaned on to its right side, turned over in literally three minutes and went to the bottom”, Interfax quoted a man who was rescued by the passing boat as saying after it docked in Kazan.
“There was thunder and heavy rain at the time. There are very many dead,” the man, who said his wife and son drowned, was quoted as saying. There were tears and cries of anguish as survivors met relatives waiting at the dock in Kazan. The man, whose name was not given, said about 30 children had gathered in a playroom near the bow minutes before the boat sank. “I’m afraid many of them [are] dead,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
Cruises on the Volga, which cuts through the heart of Russia and drains into the Caspian Sea, are popular among Russians as well as foreigners.
One body was recovered and 85 people were rescued after the river cruiser, believed to have been carrying 182 people, sank, emergency situations ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said.
The ministry’s regional branch later said on its website that 188 people had been on board, including 150 passengers, and that 102 were missing.
The cause of the sinking of the boat, the Bulgaria, was unclear, Ms Andrianova said. It was built in 1955 in what was Czechoslovakia, then a Soviet satellite.
State television said the boat had only two lifeboats instead of the initial four.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an investigation into the sinking, the Kremlin said in a statement.