Over 40 dead as ferry capsizes in Lake Victoria

The MV Nyerere sank Thursday afternoon, just metres from the dock.

Migingo Island is a tiny rocky island deep within Lake Victoria, 21.05.2009. 

The first hut was build on this tiny rocky island in 2002 and the population has risen between 500 - 700 people. Most residents are Kenyan, though there are some Ugandans and Tanzanians. It takes anything between two hours and five hours to each the island from Kenya and anything from  six up to ten hours from Uganda. The little island has four bars, a salon, lots of little shops and up to 70 prostitutes. Around 20 Ugandan soldiers, intelligence officers and police are stationed on the Kenyan island.
Dominic Nahr / Oeil Public *** Local Caption ***  NAD09008D0381.jpg
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More than 40 people died on Thursday when a ferry capsized in the south of Lake Victoria, a Tanzanian government spokesman said.

"According to reports that President John Magufuli has just received from the authorities in Mwanza, the toll now stands at more than 40 dead," Gerson Msigwa, the president's spokesman said on state television.

The boat, the MV Nyerere, sank during the afternoon just a few metres from the dock in the Ukerewe district, national ferry services operator TEMESA said.

The service had yet to establish how many passengers were on board, spokeswoman Theresia Mwami said. State radio said 26 people had been rescued.

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Mwami said TEMESA 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.