A pleasure boat carrying more than 170 people sank in Russia’s Volga river on Sunday, killing at least one person and leaving dozens missing, emergency officials said. One body has been recovered and 61 people are unaccounted for after the boat, a double-decked river cruiser called the Bulgaria, sank at 1.58 p.m. (0858 GMT) in the Tatarstan region, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman said.
“We don’t know yet why it sank. There were 140 passengers and 33 staff. One was found dead, a passing boat saved some people. Sixty-one are unaccounted for,” she said. A rescue team aided by a helicopter was searching for missing people, she said. The boat was heading to the regional capital, Kazan, some 830 km (515 miles) east of Moscow, and sank three km (1.85 miles) from shore, the ministry’s regional branch said. It sank in 20 metres of water, it said.
