Shipwreck on Africa's Lake Albert Claims 98 Lives
At least 98 people died when a boat capsized at the weekend on Lake Albert, which lies between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday.
"Based on information UNHCR has received so far from the authorities and refugees, 41 people were rescued and 98 bodies recovered" after Saturday's disaster, the refugee agency said in a statement.
"As many as 250 people may have been aboard the boat," added the UNHCR, which reported that the ill-fated vessel had been transporting Congolese refugees returning to their homeland from Uganda.
The U.N. agency said staff were "shocked and saddened" by the "tragedy ... in which a large number of Congolese refugees, including children, were drowned."
The boat that sank was "one of two that left from Hoima district on the eastern (Ugandan) side of the lake on Saturday morning, carrying refugees who had been living at Kyangwali refugee settlement but were heading back home to eastern DRC of their own accord," the UNHCR said.
Survivors were taken to the Bundibugyo district, to the southwest of the lake, where they have been taken under the wing of the Ugandan state and the UNHCR and its partner agencies, according to the statement.
Relatives have come from the DRC in a bid to identify family members at the district hospital.
Navigation on central Africa's Great Lakes can be as perilous as sailing in high seas when the weather is rough. Accidents often lead to very high casualty tolls, partly because of a lack of life-jackets and also because relatively few people know how to swim.
Saturday's disaster happened just days after the DRC authorities launched a campaign to enforce the wearing of life-jackets aboard all boats on the large nation's many waterways.
The UNHCR said that Uganda remains a haven for refugees. While most of the newly arrived ones have fled conflict in South Sudan, the country is still home to 175,000 Congolese among a total number of almost 329,000 refugees registered at the end of February.
The agency has in the past three months registered "a rise in the number of Congolese refugees spontaneously returning to the DRC", after the Congolese army last November won a major military victory over rebels of the Movement of March 23 (M23) in the troubled east.
Congolese people who decide to go home either cross Lake Albert or travel by road, the UNHCR added, stating that a campaign to warn refugees of the risks of taking to the water was already in hand.
Source: Agence France Presse
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