Dhaka - Salvage teams at the scene of a capsized ferry in Bangladesh on Saturday resumed efforts to raise the vessel as the death toll rose to 47 with around 40 people still missing.
The ferry went down in a storm on the Padma river, 100km west of Dhaka, on Tuesday but strong currents and silt have hampered repeated attempts to search the vessel for trapped bodies.
"Each time we have attached a line to the ferry it has snapped, so we will be attaching two lines today (Saturday) to try to lift it off the river bed," head of the search and salvage operation, Lieutenant Commander Mahbubur Rashid of the Bangladesh Navy, told reporters.
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Several hundred relatives remained at the scene Saturday waiting for news on the fate of missing family members.
Earlier, the crowd numbered several thousand. Some said they were so frustrated at the slow pace of the official search that they hired small boats to scour the river themselves.
But many began to leave on Friday saying that even if bodies were recovered they would be impossible to identify.
The authorities on Thursday and Friday buried 18 unidentified corpses in a government-owned graveyard near the accident site.
Survivors said at least 100 people were on board and that about 50 passengers managed to swim to the shore. Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saturday they believed around 40 people were still unaccounted for.
Police have deployed patrol boats 30km down stream in the hope of recovering more corpses.
Ferry accidents are common in Bangladesh where a network of 230 rivers provides daily transport for more than 100 000 poor, rural people. More than 3 000 people have died in at least 260 accidents since 1977.
The latest accident came two days after another ferry sank in southern Bangladesh with the loss of 60 lives.
Experts say overcrowding and illegal cabin enlargements carried out by ship owners to maximise profits make the ferries unstable and prone to capsize quickly.
An accident in February that killed 150 people prompted the government to pledge immediate action to reduce the number of lives being lost. - Sapa-AFP
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