GEORGETOWN, Guyana: At least 27 people died after a ferry capsized off the coast of Guyana, Prime Minister Mark Phillips said Monday, as the small South American nation mourned the tragedy.<\/p>\n
Sixty-nine people aboard the MV Barima have been rescued since the vessel flipped over on Saturday night, Phillips told reporters, adding that 83 more remained missing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus again is on finding people,\u201d he said, having raised the death toll from a previous 10. \u201cWe still have hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The aging ferry was traveling from the capital Georgetown to Guyana\u2019s inland Essequibo region when it overturned.<\/p>\n
Phillips said he was now \u201cconfident\u201d that 179 people were aboard, following uncertainty about the numbers involved in the disaster.<\/p>\n
Public Works Minister Juan Edghill earlier stated that the ship\u2019s passenger manifest listing 133 people on board was inaccurate.<\/p>\n
Authorities earlier Monday expanded the size of the area being searched from 400 to 1,070 square kilometers (154 to 413 square miles), while local fishermen joined recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
The French army also sent 12 divers, two doctors and a mechanic from nearby French Guiana to aid the search-and-rescue operation, the presidency said.<\/p>\n
Two crewmembers aboard the aging ferry tested positive for marijuana after the incident, Phillips had told reporters Sunday, adding that an investigation was underway.<\/p>\n
The ship began its journey in mid-afternoon and a distress call was received about eight hours later, Edghill earlier said.<\/p>\n
The ferry was built in 1939, according to the shipping website VesselFinder.<\/p>\n
Boats typically travel by sea before reaching a river to arrive at Port Kaituma, which is located in the depths of a dense rainforest.<\/p>\n
Guyana, a small English-speaking country at the northeast corner of South America, is locked in a territorial dispute with neighboring Venezuela over the oil-rich Essequibo region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GEORGETOWN, Guyana: At least 27 people died after a ferry capsized off the coast of Guyana, Prime Minister Mark Phillips said Monday, as the small South American nation mourned the tragedy. Sixty-nine people aboard the MV Barima have been rescued since the vessel flipped over on Saturday night, Phillips told reporters, adding that 83 more …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100556,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100543\/revisions\/100556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}