BAMAKO, Mali — A ferry boat accident near the town of Diré in Mali’s Timbuktu region killed dozens of people, local officials and relatives said Tuesday.
The accident occurred Thursday as the boat was trying to land at Diré, officials said. As of Tuesday, local authorities had not released an official death toll.
Regional resident and former National Assembly deputy Alkaidi Touré said Tuesday that 38 people were killed and 23 survived. Moussa Ag Almoubarek Traoré, a Diré resident, said he lost 21 family members and that he helped retrieve and tally the dead with local officials.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Traoré said: “I collected the bodies that were scattered across the river, and some were already decomposing. As I speak to you now, I can still smell the bodies.”
Witnesses said the boat was carrying families and farmers who had just harvested rice. They said it arrived after nightfall, when docking is banned due to security measures intended to thwart attacks by al Qaida-linked militants in the region.
Traoré said the boat driver did not want to wait until morning and tried to come ashore at another location, where the boat hit rocks and sank.
Mali has battled jihadi militants for several decades, alongside neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Militants from the al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) group are active in the Timbuktu region, the AP reported.
The AP said accidents involving ferry boats on the Niger River are not uncommon, though the human toll of this crash is unusually high. Touré said in remarks to the AP that the “entire region of Timbuktu is in mourning” and that “as many women and children drowned.”
As families in Diré tried to account for the dead, relatives continued to rely on local efforts to recover and tally victims while authorities withheld an official total.