8 family members die in Mozambique’s latest capsizing, a week after another killed nearly 100 people

By Associated Press

MAPUTO: At least eight people from one family have died after their homemade boat sank in central Mozambique, state media reported Tuesday.

Monday’s sinking on a tributary of the Zambezi River in Sofala province came days after nearly 100 people, many of them children, died in one of the country’s worst shipwrecks.

State-run Radio Mozambique said two people survived Tuesday and two were missing, citing Nobre dos Santos, administrator of the district where the latest sinking occurred.

The southern African country’s public broadcaster attributed the accident to “excess weight and bad weather.”

Many areas of Mozambique, a gas-rich country that is among the world’s poorest nations, are accessible only by boats, which are often overcrowded.

President Filipe Nyusi last week declared three days of mourning after the April 8 disaster, when a ferry overcrowded with residents reportedly fleeing a feared cholera outbreak capsized off Mozambique’s northern coast, killing at least 98 people.