Divers searching the wreck of a Russian Volga river boat reportedly saw more than one hundred corpses trapped inside the pleasure craft when they recovered dozens of bodies Monday.
A few dozen divers working with underwater lights searched the Bulgaria, a double-decked boat built in 1955 that survivors said listed to its side and sank in minutes Sunday during stormy weather with more than 200 people on board. That's nearly 75 percent more than the 120 the boat was licensed to carry, officials said.
The death toll rose to 41 on Monday, with about 80 people still missing a day after the accident, Russian Emergency Ministry officials said.
Eighty people were rescued, most of them climbing aboard a passing boat after more than an hour in the water, but there is little hope anyone else has survived.
"According to the divers, the chances of finding anyone alive are minimal," she said.
An estimated 110 bodies, including those of at least 30 children, remained in the sunken ship, the Interfax news agency cited a regional search and rescue service as saying.
As many as 60 of the passengers may have been children, Russian media reported, and survivors said some 30 children had gathered in a room near the stern of the ship to play just minutes before it sank.
'Two ships did not stop' One survivor told the national news channel Vesti 24 that other ships refused to come to their aid.
"Two ships did not stop, although we waved our hands," said the man in his 40s, who stood on the shore amid weeping passengers, some of them wrapped in towels and blankets. He held another man, who was weeping desperately.
The top Volga district emergency official, Igor Panshin, said bodies could be seen in the 56-year-old pleasure craft's restaurants and the hold. Citing survivors, he said the boat sank in about eight minutes.
There were sobs of relief as anxious relatives greeted survivors who were brought to the port in Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, late Sunday.
"The child is back there," one man cried, wailing with grief as he hugged a woman.
One woman told state-run Rossiya-24 television she lost her grip on her daughter as they struggled to escape.
"Practically no children made it out," the woman said. "There were very many children on the boat, very many."
Criminal probe Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that the riverboat had been in poor condition and warned that far too many such 'rust tubs' were being used in Russian waters.
"According to the information we have today, the vessel was in poor condition," Medvedev told a hastily convened meeting of senior ministers at his Gorki residence outside Moscow.
"The number of old rust tubs which we have sailing is exorbitant," he said.
Medvedev ordered investigators to determine the cause of the disaster and prosecutors opened a criminal investigation. Russian media reports focused on the age of the boat, built in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Cruises on the Volga, which cuts through the heart of Russia hundreds of miles east of Moscow and drains into the Caspian Sea, are popular among Russians and foreigners. It is Europe's longest river, and reaches up to 19 miles wide in places.
The Bulgaria had taken its passengers from Kazan to a town down river Saturday and was returning when it sank in 65-feet-deep water.
The Bulgaria was built in 1955 in Czechoslovakia and belongs to a local tourism company.
A tourism expert said the lack of partitions inside the Bulgaria made it vulnerable to breaches.
"In case of an accident these ships sink within minutes," Dmitri Voropayev, head of the Samara Travel company, told RIA Novosti.
Russia's Tourism Industry Union said the ship had not been inspected or retrofitted for years, according to the Interfax news agency.
taken from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43708404/ns/world_news-europe/
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