Lukolela boat collision leaves 26 bodies found and 82 people still missing

Twenty-six bodies have been recovered from the Congo River at Ngombe, in Lukolela territory of Equateur province, after the whaleboat H/B Victoire collided with another motor boat and sank. Actualite.cd reported on Tuesday that the Victoire was carrying 163 passengers, that 55 were taken off to Lukolela-Centre, and that 82 people were still missing. A separate count from provincial interior minister Crispin Mputu put the dead at 30, with bodies already buried, and survivors at 59.

The collision was on the night of Friday into Saturday at Ngombe. The Victoire went down after the impact. The second boat was held at Ngombe to wait for investigators sent from Mbandaka, the provincial capital. Local security committees from Lukolela and Ngombe are running the search with riverside residents and other boat crews. Darkness slowed the first hours. The exact cause has not been fixed.

Mputu's account of the routes fills in what the wreck count does not. One vessel was a commercial boat heading to Kinshasa from Ubangi. The other was a passenger boat going from Kinshasa to Lukolela, which is close to the crash point. A security source told the Associated Press the boat coming back from Ubangi was overloaded with goods and hit the one coming from Kinshasa. A Reuters security source matched the 163-passenger figure for the boat that sank.

The two death tolls, 26 and 30, are not yet reconciled. Actualite's 26 are bodies found floating, against 108 initially missing and 55 rescued, which adds to 163. Mputu's 30 buried and 59 rescued is a different arithmetic on the same stretch of river. Both can move. River searches in Equateur often revise for days, because bodies travel with the current and passenger lists on wooden boats are incomplete. The number that has held across outlets is 163 on the boat that sank.

Night navigation is the condition Mputu pointed to. He said travel on the river after dark had killed many people before this crash. That is a description of practice, not a finding. Wooden whaleboats on the Congo carry passengers and cargo with little lighting, no reliable manifest, and no separation between freight and people. An overloaded commercial hull meeting a passenger boat in the dark at Ngombe is a mechanism that fits both the AP source and the minister. It is not yet a written cause. The held boat at Ngombe is the evidence the Mbandaka team can actually inspect. If it was overloaded, the load will still be on it or on the bank. If the Victoire's list was oral, the 163 figure stays a crew estimate.

The river is the road in this part of Equateur. Lukolela and Ngombe have no substitute highway for the Kinshasa run. A held boat at Ngombe and a team from Mbandaka are the whole of the formal inquiry so far. Families in Lukolela-Centre are working from the rescued list of 55. The missing list, 82 on the Actualite count, is the one that decides whether Tuesday's toll is the toll. Burial has already started on the minister's account. Once bodies are in the ground without a manifest match, later identification depends on clothing and on relatives at the bank, not on a hospital record.

What would close the gap is a single manifest and a single body count signed by the Mbandaka team. Until then the public figures are the ones the territory has: 163 aboard the Victoire, 55 or 59 brought ashore, 26 or 30 buried, and a second boat tied up at Ngombe waiting for the inspectors.