11 drown in Guinea wreck
2008-03-17 17:16
Conakry - At least 11 people, including nine students from Cameroon, drowned when a boat sank off Guinea's capital Conakry, and three people are still missing, medical and Cameroonian sources said on Monday.
The boat sank on Saturday with 34 Cameroonian students, four Guinean crew members, and one local passenger on board, the head of a student association in Guinea, Dominique Djomo, told AFP.
Fishermen and other sailors pulled 25 survivors from Gulf of Guinea waters shortly after the accident, Djomo said.
On Sunday, a medical worker told AFP that the bodies of eight students were in the morgue in a Conakry, but Djomo added a ninth, while hospital officials said the bodies of two crew members were recovered by their families.
Djomo said the passengers were headed for the island of Room, part of the small Loos archipelago, when their apparently overloaded pirogue capsized in strong winds close to Soro island.