At least 25 people have died after an overloaded whaling boat capsized on the Congo River in central-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities said today.

The shipwreck occurred on the night of Sunday to Monday near the city of Kindu, the capital of Maniema province. “We found 25 bodies,” said Moussa Kampuankoubi Moise, the governor of Manyema, noting that the toll was provisional.

The main causes of the accident were that the ship was sailing at night and was overloaded, he explained.

The number of missing passengers remains unclear.

“There are many missing people. We are continuing investigations to trace them,” said the mayor of Kindu, Augustine Mulaba Atibu. “We don’t know exactly how many people were on the whale,” explained Stefan Kamundala, the president of the province’s civil protection agency. There was no passenger list from which to determine the number of people missing, he added, and port authorities are unable to say how many people were traveling on that vessel.

In DR Congo, there are few passable roads and travel is mainly by boat on the lakes, the Congo River and its tributaries. Shipwrecks are a frequent phenomenon and usually with a heavy toll. Last October, 28 people lost their lives in the same river when the boat they were on sank, while in 2019, in a shipwreck in Lake Kivu, the victims exceeded 100.