15 killed as ferry sinks on Zimbabwe's Lake Kariba, 27 missing
An overloaded ferry capsized on Zimbabwe's Lake Kariba, killing at least 15 people and leaving 27 missing, the national disaster management agency said.
The agency confirmed 77 people were rescued and taken to an island on the lake.
A statement by Zimbabwe's Civil Protection Unit said it could only confirm 114 adult passengers on board, along with five crew members, through confirmed ticket sales. There could have been an unknown number of children below ticketing age on board who were not accounted for, it said. The boat has a carrying capacity of 90 people, the agency said.
Mutsa Murombedzi, a local member of Parliament, posted a video of what she said were people on shore waving off the ageing ferry at the start of its journey. She said rural communities use the boat to travel along the lake to the town of Kariba. Some people standing on the shore appeared concerned about whether the ferry would survive strong waves on the lake, according to the video.
Earlier, Zimbabwe police said a rescue operation was under way but gave no other details. State broadcaster ZBC published video of speedboats making their way towards what appeared to be an overturned boat on the lake, as a helicopter hovered overhead.
Lake Kariba in southern Africa forms part of the border between Zimbabwe and neighbouring Zambia. It is the largest man-made lake in the world by volume, created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by building a dam wall to block the Zambezi River, resulting in a valley that slowly filled with water to form a huge lake now more than 200 km long and up to 40 km wide in places. Zimbabwe and Zambia share the lake, with the official border between them running through its middle.
