Dozens more bodies have been recovered after the sinking of a ferry carrying hundreds of people in Tanzania, taking the death toll up to 86, the privately owned The Citizen newspaper says on its website.
The paper cited figures from John Mongella, the regional commissioner for Mwanza on Lake Victoria, where the MV Nyerere capsized on Thursday.
Initial estimates showed that the MV Nyerere was carrying more than 300 people on board.
It went down on Thursday afternoon just a few metres from the dock in Ukerewe district, according to national ferry services operator TEMESA.
It was hard to establish the precise number of passengers on board since the person dispensing tickets had also drowned, with the machine recording the data lost.
TEMESA spokeswoman Theresia Mwami said the operator had carried out maintenance on the ferry in recent months, overhauling two engines.
In 1996, a ferry disaster on Lake Victoria in the same region killed at least 500 people.
In 2012, at least 145 people died in a ferry disaster in Tanzania's semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, on a vessel that was overcrowded.
Reuters
