(Daniel Berhane)

Update: The rescue mission was concluded yesterday(Wednesday). The half-sunken Fasiledes boat regained its normal position. General Manager Tedros Tegene confirmed to this blog that the total number dead stands at 7, while all the rest 94 passengers survived. Among the survivors, 16 suffered light injuries.

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Lake Tana: 5 dead, 6 missing after boat accident
(Daniel Berhane)
(Tuesday, May 21)

Five died, while six are missing after a boat accident at Lake Tana, the source of Nile, located in north-west Ethiopia.

A boat named Fasiledes, with 101 people on board, sank at one end of Lake Tana yesterday around 5pm. Most of the passengers are believed to be adherents of Ethiopian Orthodox Church travelling to a religious site for a holiday.

The boat belongs to the state-owned Lake Tana Transport Enterprise, according to General Manager of the Enterprise, Tedros Tegene, who made a phone interview with this blog.

Tedros Tegene confirmed that five people are dead, while atleast 90 passengers survived. Elderly and women are among the dead, though it appears all children made it alive.

The missing 6 passengers can not be declared dead since passengers made it to the shore through several points, thus the total number of the survivors could still increase. He doesn’t expect the missing people could be alive if they are still on the lake.

The boat sank off by one side only 50 meter off-shore from a specific place called Delgi town, though it is not clear whether it was on a return trip.

Tedros indicated that the boat was not overloaded, as it has the capacity to carry more people and there was no much freight load.

The Captain of the boat is among the survivors and told media that the boat lost balance since passengers, in haste to depart, assembled to one side of the boat. It is not clear how plausible this  hypothesis is.

Lake Tana Transport Enterprise is a 70 year-old Enterprise providing boat transport to local people and tourists travelling to the monasteries on Ethiopia’s largest lake Tana, covering 2,156sqkm.

The enterprise started work with a couple of Italian-made boats. The defeated Italian army sank its boats while retreating from the area. Ethiopians recovered the boats and put them to civilian use shortly after. According to Tedros, Fasiledes is one the Italian boats, though the enterprise rebuilt the body and changed its engine two months ago.

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Editings:
* Updated with the last paragraph – May 21 [6:50pm]
* Updated with a new paragraph at the top and a revised headline – May 23 [1:14pm]