At least 187 drown after Zanzibar ferry carrying more than 800 people capsizes

The vessel was heading to the neighbouring island of Pemba late on Friday night, about 25 miles from Zanzibar’s main island Unguja. So far 620 people have been rescued.

Dr Karim Zah, of the Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Zanzibar, warned: “We are still receiving many bodies by truckloads… the death toll will likely be much higher.”

Dozens of soldiers carrying bodies to shore dotted the white sand beaches at the northern tip of Zanzibar where thousands of people awaited news of survivors early yesterday. A stream of military trucks brought in bodies to the Maisara football grounds in Stone Town, where tens of thousands of people gathered to identify the dead. Emergency workers covered bodies in dark blankets and placed the victims’ clothes on top to help relatives identify them.

At the popular tourist destination of Nungwi, fishing boats and diving vessels ferried survivors ashore, a dozen or fewer at a time, and crowds waded waist deep in the water as the boats approached shore, desperately searching for friends and relatives.

Unguja and Pemba are the two largest islands of the Zanzibar archipelago, a popular destination for tourists visiting its pristine Indian Ocean beaches.

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region of the East African country of Tanzania.

“The ship’s manifest shows the vessel travelling from Unguja to Pemba had more than 500 passengers on board,” said police commissioner Mussa Alli Mussa.

Suleiman Amis, 32, who works on a local diving tour boat, said: “We sent out some boats to search for the survivors, but we did not find them until very, very late.

“We have friends who we know took that boat and we want to go back out to find them as soon as possible.”

Passengers who regularly take ferries between Unguja and Pemba said the vessels were in a poor state of repair and were often overcrowded and loaded down with cargo.

Abdual Said, registrar of Zanzibar’s seafaring vessels, said the capsized ferry, MV Spice, was only licensed to carry 600 passengers.

“They normally pack us in like sardines in a can. And for that I really fear this could be a very big disaster,” said resident Mwnakhamis Juma.

The government in Zanzibar said last month it planned to invest in bigger, more reliable ferries on the route. Zanzibar’s cabinet met yesterday in response to the disaster.

“We are fearing the greatest calamity in the history of Zanzibar,” said a government official, who declined to be named.

Two small overloaded boats capsized and were swept away in high seas off Tanzania’s coast in January this year and, in May 2009, a vessel just off Zanzibar sank with dozens aboard, killing six people.