Around 86 bodies have been recovered from Lake Victoria in Tanzania after a boat capsized, officials said.

John Mongella, regional commissioner of Tanzania’s Mwanza region, told Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation 40 survivors were rescued after Thursday’s ferry disaster.

Forty-four bodies were recovered on Thursday, with an additional 42 pulled from the water in Friday rescue operations, he said.
Rescue teams are continuing to search for hundreds who were likely onboard the overcrowded ferry.

Images from the scene showed rescuers in boats alongside the overturned ferry, picking up survivors in orange life rings.

The rescuers were also retrieving bodies from the water.

Only 37 people were rescued on Thursday before poor visibility halted operations.

The exact number of passengers on board the boat is unknown, but it may have been carrying 400 to 500 passengers, according to local media reports.

Ferries in Tanzania are often overcrowded, and the lack of an accurate passenger manifest is complicating rescue operations.

Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa, which straddles the borders of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

This latest incident underlines the issue of dangerous overcrowding on ferries in the region.
Some 200 people were killed after an overloaded vessel — carrying more than 1,000 passengers despite an official capacity of only 620 — hit strong winds off the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean in 2011.

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