At least 150 people drowned at sea off Sierra Leone when an overloaded motorised canoe capsized while carrying them home after they fled fighting, a union official and survivors said yesterday.
The accident happened on Monday about 8km off the town of Tasso as the boat headed for the fishing town of Tombo. Survivors said many of those on board, who included women and children, had fled fighting in Tombo last week between rebels and forces loyal to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
"The boat sank because it was overloaded with more than 200 people and was carrying 300 bags of sugar," a senior official of the Sierra Leone Boatmen's Union said.
"Some of us were traders travelling with foodstuffs and petrol, which is in short supply in these villages, but many were returning home to Tombo as the fighting in the area has now stopped," said a 36-year-old woman survivor.
Motorised canoes are larger than the name suggests but are not built to carry more than around 100 people. Boatmen say more than 400 people have now drowned in three such sinkings this month.
Officers serving with a west African intervention force in Tasso said in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, that the boat's crew had been warned not to leave port as the boat was overloaded. Mr Kabbah's government has banned such trips for security and safety reasons.
Meanwhile, in Freetown, at least 6,350 people killed in fighting in January have been buried in mass graves, health authorities said yesterday. The UN had put the figure at 5,000 in a provisional report in February on two weeks of fighting between rebels and west African forces defending the capital.
Dr Arthur Williams, director of laboratory services at the Ministry of Health, said the higher figure followed the exhumation and reburial of more bodies from makeshift graves around the city.
"The corpses had to be exhumed and reburied in mass graves like thousands of others which health officials had buried before," Dr Williams said. Many of the dead were civilians, witnesses said.
Nigerian-led west African intervention troops evicted invading rebels after more than two weeks of fighting but the insurgents remain active on city fringes and in the interior.