Madagascar rejects 'sinking'
2004-03-11 08:34
Antananarivo - Authorities in northwestern Madagascar on Wednesday refused to conclude that a Comoran ferry missing since the weekend with 113 people on board sank in tropical cyclone Gafilo, and vowed that the search would go on.
A few hours earlier a Comoran government official had said "we can suppose" the vessel, the Samson, had "most probably" sunk off the northwestern Madagascan province of Mahajanga.
"Officially, we are continuing the search, and we are not declaring the ferry sunk," the first vice president of Mahajanga, Jean Delacroix Razafitsimialona, told reporters.
The ferry had been headed from the Comoran island of Anjouan to Mahajanga.
Wednesday afternoon a man who said he had survived the ordeal told police in Mahajanga that the ferry had sunk at 02:00 on Monday (23:00 GMT on Sunday).
"We will verify this information tomorrow, for this man is very weak and some of his statements were incoherent," Razafitsimialona said.
- AFP