Motorboat Carrying 150 Sinks In Ghana

An overloaded motorboat carrying about 150 passengers on a lake in Ghana has sunk and 110 people are missing and feared dead, police said Monday.

Only 40 people are known to have survived the accident Saturday afternoon on Ghana's Lake Volta, and hopes are dimming that more will be found, said Akwasi Anyidoho, a police official in the region. Search efforts are continuing, he said.

The motorboat was carrying passengers across the vast lake to the mainland, where they were moving their homes after the island was designated a natural reserve.

The boat struck something submerged in the water and sank, Anyidoho said by telephone from the region. He said the boat had exceeded its legal passenger capacity.

In Africa, a vast continent with poor road and rail systems, river or ocean routes are used to transport goods to market, and many Africans rely on often rickety vessels. Few captains keep proper passenger manifests and the exact death tolls from many accidents are never known.

Some 1,863 died when the MS Joola capsized off the coast of Senegal on Sept. 26, 2002, a more deadly accident than the Titanic. Only about 60 people survived.