At least 16 people have died after a boat carrying hundreds of passengers capsized in north-central Nigeria. Several people are missing in this incident.
News agency AFP reported.
Abdullahi Baba Arah, the head of Niger state emergency services, said most of the passengers on the boat were women and children, according to the report. They were going to celebrate the Muslim festival of Mawlid on Tuesday (October 1) local time.
He said the boat was passing the Niger River at Gabajibo community near Mokwa at around 8:30pm. At that time there were about 300 passengers on that boat.
He did not mention what caused the accident. Volunteers and divers managed to rescue around 150 people alive after the accident.
Emergency agency spokesman Ibrahim Audu Husseini told AFP that 16 bodies had been recovered so far. Among them two women and 14 men.
He said, we are trying to rescue more people. Rescue and search operations are still going on.