By Agencies
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s provincial government of Mongala has decreed a three-day provincial mourning, from Monday, , in memory of the victims of the sinking of a convoy of motorized canoes on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday last week in the village of Engengele, about 24 kilometers away upstream from the city, according to interim governor, Serge Mongulu.
The authorities are currently talking about 55 bodies recovered from a hundred of the missing and more than 80 survivors. They also confirm that research is still continuing on the Congo River, around Bumba, in order to find some bodies.
But, the hope of finding other survivors becomes minimal. Because several passengers would still be buried under water, precisely under bags of corn. It is also difficult, affirms a witness, to raise the boat of the 9 canoes, which were engulfed at the bottom of the river by the load in particular of the fired bricks which were on board.
However, several observers ask the two governors of Mongala and Tshopo to instruct their river marshals to enforce the laws, including the ban on night navigation, which is the basis of many accidents of this kind.
