DUBAI, March 28: Dubai authorities revised down the death toll in a dry dock disaster by one to 21 on Thursday, as divers ended a second day of searching for people caught when seawater surged through a gate and flooded the dock.

A security official said divers would resume their search of the murky waters on Friday for around eight people still missing and believed to be dead.

Another security official at the scene said 241 people had been at the ship repair yard on Wednesday morning when a gate caved in, letting walls of water into the dry dock in one of the worst accidents to hit Dubai, a Gulf trade and tourism hub in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

“The problem is poor visibility because of paints and oil, and some bodies maybe be stuck at the bottom,” the official said. “It is not possible to drain the dock because the hole in the gate will take 10 days to two weeks to fix.”

Five people were still receiving medical attention in hospital. A shipping source had said on Wednesday that as many as 50 people, mostly Indian and Filipino workers, may have died. Officials did not have a breakdown of the nationalities of those killed or missing, but said they were all Asian.—Reuters