At least 13 people, including six schoolgirls, drowned and three others went missing after a trawler capsized in a Shailpara haor at Dharmapasha in Sunamganj Tuesday morning.
Paikurati union council chairman Rehanuddin said rescuers in the evening were still searching three schoolgirls who had been missing.
The upazila nirbahi officer, Babul Miah, quoting survivors, said the trawler with 50 passengers on board started from Balijuri for Badshaganj, a distance of about four kilometers, and it was caught in a strong wind and capsized about 9:30am.
Rehanuddin said bodies of six schoolgirls, four children and two women were recovered after the accident. Another body was recovered later in the afternoon.
The passengers mostly included schoolchildren of the Badshaganj Public High School and Badshaganj Girls High School, Babul said.
He said many swam ashore but six schoolgirls of the Badshaganj Public High School and the people who were under the trawler roof could not come out.
Five of the survivors who kept afloat somehow were rescued in the afternoon by the local people, who conducted a search after the capsize about 500 metres off the bank, upazila council chairman, Abdul Awal, who visited the spot, said. They were sent to hospital.
About 40 children on board the trawler were on their way to school, the district police superintendent, Golam Kibria, told Agence France-Presse.
Rehanuddin said Tk 2,000 was given to the families of each victim to for funerals. A namaz-e-janaza was held in the Balijuri Primary School ground after the maghrib prayers, he said.
A police officer, Shahid Mia Chowdhury, who visited the spot, said the rescuers were trying to lift the boat from the river bed.
‘We believe the boat sank because it was carrying too many passengers,’ he told the news agency. He said rescuers did not have an estimate of how many people had been on board.
Source: NewAge
