50 Feared Dead on Barge Reported Sunk

A Zairian barge sank in Lake Tanganyika and all 50 people on board were feared dead, a newspaper reported. The barge, Ekizongwe, was en route from the Zairian port of Kalemie to the Tanzanian port of Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, the Sunday Observer newspaper reported. It quoted the captain of another Zairian barge as saying the barge left Kalemie on Dec. 14 and should have arrived in Kigoma the next day. Reports of the disaster were slow to emerge because of communication difficulties in the region. Early this year, more than 800 people died when a Tanzanian ferry sank off the Lake Victoria port of Mwanza. That disaster was blamed on the overloading of a vessel that had structural defects.