At Least 33 Dead In DR Congo Boat Fire

Kinshasa: The mayor of the DR Congo town near where a boat caught fire earlier this week told AFP Saturday at least 33 people died in the disaster, significantly fewer than previously reported.

More than 200 passengers were crowded onto a wooden boat on the Congo River in northwest DRC on Tuesday when the blaze broke out, said the mayor of Mbandaka, Yves Balo.

"We count 195 who have survived, including 22 burn victims who are being cared for at Wangata general hospital, and 33 deaths, with 29 people already buried and four more still at the morgue," Balo told AFP.

The disaster occurred near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, at the confluence of the Ruki and the vast Congo River -- the world's deepest.

The mayor's toll, the first official one from the blaze, was far lower than that of at least 143 deaths previously given to AFP.

Josephine-Pacifique Lokumu, head of a delegation of national deputies from the region, had put the toll at 143.

And Joseph Lokondo, a local civil society leader who said he helped bury the bodies, put the "provisional death toll at 145: some burnt, others drowned".

Asked about the discrepancy, Balo pointed to "confusion" in the tallying of the deaths from the tragedy.

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