Kinshasa - At least 10 people are dead and 30 are missing after their boat sank on Lake Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, corroborating sources said Tuesday.
"More than 30 people have been lost. We have fished out 10 bodies, four of them children," Edouard Pamba, president of the association of ship operators on the lake, told AFP by telephone from Goma, the capital of Nord Kivu.
He said 62 people had been saved after Monday's accident.
The toll of 30 missing was confirmed by the United Nations mission in DR Congo (MONUC).
The motorised wooden boat was carrying passengers and food between Kibirwa, in South Kivu province and Kituku port in Goma, Pamba said.
He added that the boat had been in a bad state, overloaded and that conditions were rough when it sank around half an hour after it set off.
Rescuers were still searching Tuesday afternoon for bodies or possible survivors.
Shipwrecks occur frequently in the central African country that is recovering from almost five years of war, from 1998-2003. - Sapa-AFP