A tragic boat accident in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali has left dozens dead, confirmed local officials and relatives of the deceased on Tuesday.
The accident involving a ferry boat took place last Thursday, said officials, when the vessel was nearing land at the Niger River town of Diré, but hit rocks and sank. While local authorities had not yet released an official death toll, regional resident and former National Assembly deputy, Alkaidi Touré, said Tuesday that 38 were killed and 23 survived.
The boat is said to have been carrying families and farmers who had just harvested rice. They were due to arrive back in town after nightfall, when docking is banned due to security measures aimed at thwarting attacks by al Qaida-linked militants in the region. But, the boat driver didn’t want to wait until morning and attempted to come ashore from another direction, say reports, which is when his boat hit the rocks.
A Diré resident, Moussa Ag Almoubarek Traoré, said he lost 21 family members in the accident. He said he had also helped retrieve and tally the dead with local officials.
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“I collected the bodies that were scattered across the river, and some were already decomposing. As I speak to you now, I can still smell the bodies,” he said.
Mali, a country of 25 million people, has battled jihadi militants for several decades, alongside neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Militants from the al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) group are active in the Timbuktu region of Mali.
Accidents involving ferry boats on the Niger River are not uncommon, and although there are no reliable statistics on this type of accident, the human toll of this accident is unusually high.
“The entire region of Timbuktu is in mourning, because this accident has had a profound impact on the population, as many women and children drowned,” Alkaidi Touré said.
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