Up to 140 people are feared dead after a boat carrying passengers and goods capsized on a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say.
The accident happened on the Kasai river - a tributary of the Congo River - in the western province of Bandundu.
Information Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC the boat had been overloaded and 80 people had been confirmed dead.
After decades of conflict, DR Congo has few roads or rail links and many people travel on often overloaded vessels.
I've not been on this boat, but I've been on one like it. It is true that you can't actually drive from, say, Kinshasa in the west to the eastern edge of the country (without leaving the country for several hundred miles), and these larger river borne boats are the only not-air way to travel such long distances.
source: BBC
Oh dear. :-(
That reminds me of the transport situation in many poor nations (and in Japan as an instance of a well-off country with crowding problems on transport). There is not enough transport (and even less transport in good working condition) so people pile onto boats and ferries, hang off the roof of trains, and hang off the outside of busses.