Toll Rises In Senegal Ferry Disaster

The toll of victims missing and presumed dead in Senegal's ferry disaster soared by nearly 250 Sunday, with the government now saying 1,034 passengers and crew were on board the doomed vessel.

Only 64 people are known to have survived the ocean ferry's capsizing — and Sunday's announcement escalated the suspected death toll dramatically, to 970.

All of those who survived were rescued by passing fishing boats in the first hours early Friday morning, after the Senegalese state-run MS Joola capsized in a fierce gale.

Authorities originally said 797 people had been on board — already making it one of Africa's deadliest ferry disasters.

Sunday, the government added in 185 passengers who had boarded the ferry at a second stop en route from southern Senegal, and the 55-member crew — bringing the total of those aboard to 1,034, said Diadji Toure, communication's adviser for Senegal's prime minister.

Media reports have said the MS Joola was designed to hold no more than 600 people.

President Abdoulaye Wade, who told an anguished crowd of relatives on Saturday that the government bore responsibility, has ordered an investigation into the cause.

Senegalese and Gambian authorities said Sunday they had recovered at least 352 bodies, many pulled from inside the vessel, where victims had been trapped.

Retrieval teams piled hundreds of corpses on boats waiting to be brought offshore. In 30 degree Celsius (85 Fahrenheit) waters, the dead were rapidly disintegrating.

"There is really a feeling of despair among the rescuers," said Mamadou Diop Thioune, of a French-funded marine center whose divers are helping in the search. "There's simply not much hope left."

In Dakar, Senegal's capital, grieving families looked at photographs of bloated faces of the recovered dead, seeking out the features of their loved ones.

About 500 relatives thronged the entrance of city hall, waiting for word and searching for names on the list.

The disaster happened off Gambia, a miles-wide former English colony divided north and south Senegal.

By midday Sunday, Gambian and Senegalese sailors and other searchers had collected 300 bodies from the ferry, the water and from along the coast, where some were washing up, said Aminata Dibba, permanent secretary for Gambia's presidency.

With both Senegal's and Dakar's navies taking part of the search, and with some corpses being taken to Senegal and others going to Gambia, confusion surrounded the body count — as it climbed higher and higher in the hundreds.

Wade on Sunday proposed burying the decomposed bodies in a common grave — a suggestion to which many mourning families, wanting to bury their loved ones themselves, angrily objected.

Divers said the MS Joola remained on the surface of the Atlantic, overturned.

French military forces and doctors, working alongside their Senegalese counterparts, deployed two boats carrying divers and a search-and-rescue plane.

"This is a catastrophe of such a magnitude that everyone of goodwill has to mobilize," said Valerie Junot, of the French Embassy in Dakar