Kinshasa – At least 41 people died last night after a boat wrecked in the Congo River, in the province of Equateur located in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), official sources confirmed.
The accident involved a boat belonging to the rangers of the Ngiri Triangle Natural Reserve, where people were being transported. According to local authorities, the survivors claimed that the accident was caused by bad weather, but the Public Prosecutor’s Office arrested five rangers and is investigating the facts.
Among the victims are traders and workers who were moving between the Ngiri Reserve and Mbandaka, Ingende and other localities, although the spokesman for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, Dieudonné Sidia, explained to the EFE agency that those who were traveling were presumably relatives of the rangers, who were attending a funeral.
Shipwrecks in rivers and lakes of this nation are frequent, as they are used daily as a means of transportation, in precarious vessels loaded with merchandise or people.
In October 2021, at least 61 people also washed up in the Congo River after the sinking of a makeshift boat formed from the joining of a convoy of nine motorised canoes near the town of Engengele, in the province of Mongala. – Prensa Latina
