Divers searching the wreck of a Russian Volga River boat reportedly saw more than 100 corpses trapped inside the pleasure craft as they recovered dozens of bodies yesterday.
A few dozen divers working with underwater lights searched the Bulgaria, a double-decked boat built in 1955 that survivors said listed to its side and sank in minutes on Sunday during stormy weather with more than 200 people on board.
Forty-two people were confirmed dead, the Emergency Situations Ministry said — one woman who was found on Sunday and 41 other people whose bodies were pulled from the wreck.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Eighty people were rescued, most of them climbing aboard a passing boat after more than an hour in the water, but there is little hope anyone else has survived.
“According to the divers, the chances of finding anyone alive are minimal,” a ministry spokeswoman said.
An estimated 110 bodies, including those of 30 children, remained in the sunken ship, the Interfax news agency cited a regional search and rescue service as saying earlier in the day.
As many as 60 of the passengers may have been children, Russian media reported, and survivors said some 30 children had gathered in a room near the stern of the ship to play just minutes before it sank.
Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu yesterday said 208 people were onboard, but the ministry’s regional branch in Tatarstan earlier said the number was 199, including 18 unregistered passengers.
The bodies of 28 women, 10 men and three children were recovered yesterday, said a spokesman for the ministry’s branch in Tatarstan, where the boat sank 3km from shore in a broad section of the Volga river.
The top Volga district emergency official, Igor Panshin, said bodies could be seen in the 56-year-old pleasure craft’s restaurants and the hold. Citing survivors, he said the boat sank in about eight minutes.
There were sobs of relief as anxious relatives greeted survivors who were brought to the port in Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, late on Sunday.
“The child is back there,” one man cried, wailing with grief as he hugged a woman.
One woman told state-run Rossiya-24 television she lost her grip on her daughter as they struggled to escape.
“Practically no children made it out,” the woman said. “There were very many children on the boat, very many.”
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a total review of the nation’s transportation infrastructure and prosecutors opened a criminal investigation.
Russian media reports focused on the age of the boat, built in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Cruises on the Volga, which cuts through the heart of Russia hundreds of kilometers east of Moscow and drains into the Caspian Sea, are popular among Russians and foreigners.
The Bulgaria had taken its passengers from Kazan to a town down river on Saturday and was returning when it sank in 20m-deep water.
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