DHAKA, May 4: A ferry carrying about 500 passengers sank in a storm in southern Bangladesh on Friday night and officials fear hundreds may have died or been swept away by strong river currents.

Some survivors alleged the ferry was overloaded and said strong winds caused it to list to one side and sink.

Divers found the bodies of a woman and a child and pulled nearly 100 survivors from the turbulent Meghna River, keeping their fingers crossed for further rescues.

Scores of wailing men and women crowded the river’s banks looking for relatives among the survivors or seeking news about the missing.

“I was going to Barisal (near Patuakhali) with my one-and-half-year-old son. We were on the upper deck. Suddenly a strong wind blew and the ferry listed to one side. It sank immediately,” said a woman, Julekha.

“I was saved by another vessel but my son died,” she told a photographer at the scene.

Another survivor, Mohammad Altaf, said: “It (the ferry) was packed beyond its carrying capacity. It was dark and we were sitting on the ferry’s congested upper deck. It was drizzling, then came the strong winds and the ferry listed to one side. “Within moments I was thrown overboard into the water and I saw the ferry going down as well.” The triple-decked M.V. Salahuddin-2, which sank around midnight, was on its way to Patuakhali from Dhaka.

It went down near Shatnal, a rural area 170kms south of the capital, where the Meghna meets its tributaries and often floods its banks.

Officials maintained the death toll could reach the hundreds once the ferry was lifted from the river bottom, which is not expected until Sunday, and which would make it one of the worst river tragedies Bangladesh has known. More than 200 people were killed when a ferry sank near Chandpur in 1994.

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia expressed shock over the ferry disaster and ordered a massive rescue effort, the state-run Bangladesh Television reported.

The government had formed a three-member committee, headed by a senior official of the shipping ministry, to investigate the ferry’s sinking and ascertain its causes, it said.

The administrator of Chandpur said after visiting the scene: “Nearly 100 people have been rescued and some more managed to swim ashore. But the majority of the passengers are missing, feared drowned.—Reuters