A ferry carrying 50 passengers sank on Sunday in a collision with another boat in central Bangladesh, authorities said, killing at least two.
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The ship sank in the Shitalakhsya River around 6 p.m. local time, after leaving the industrial town of Narayanganj, twenty kilometers from the capital Dhaka, bound for the neighboring district of Munshiganj, officials told AFP, who said that searches for possible survivors are continuing.
A local police official told AFP the ferry was full of passengers eager to leave Narayanganj after the government instituted a seven-day nationwide lockdown from Monday to tackle a recent increase in Covid cases. 19.
According to the administrator of the Narayanganj district government, Shukla Sarker, eleven people have so far been rescued.
“
We don't know how many people are missing,
” she said.
"
The firefighters' divers are on site and organize the rescue
."
"
So far we have found the bodies of a man and a woman,
" said Narayanganj fire brigade chief Abdullah al Arefin.
Local police chief Dipak Saha said rescue efforts were hampered by a powerful storm that arose after the crash.
Ferry accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers.
Millions of people depend on ferries for transport, especially in the country's southern coastal region, but ships are often overloaded and in poor condition.
In June last year, a ferry sank in Dhaka after being struck by another ship, and at least 32 people were killed.
In February 2015, at least 78 people died when an overloaded ship collided with a cargo ship in a river in central Bangladesh.