DAKAR, Sept 28: Hopes faded on Saturday for about 700 people feared drowned when a ferry sank on its way to the Senegalese capital, as the government came under fire for its role in possibly one of the world’s worst maritime disasters.

The bodies of about 200 people have so far been recovered and around 60 survivors plucked from the sea after the ferry capsized and sank on Thursday night in stormy seas off Africa’s west coast.

Rescuers continued to search for passengers from the Joola, backed up by two French military vessels and a helicopter, but they said the chances of finding more survivors was growing increasingly slim.

The Joola was carrying 796 passengers when it left Ziguinchor, the main town of the southern Senegalese province of Casamance, for the capital Dakar, officials said.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, facing mounting criticism about the ship’s seaworthiness, emerged from his presidential palace in Dakar on Saturday to confront angry crowds demanding answers about the tragedy.

“I believe there was an accumulation of errors,” Wade said, announcing the recovery of another 150 bodies after 41 were found on Friday.

Senegal’s independent press was near-unanimous in blaming the disaster on the government, which had returned the Joola to service earlier this month after a year of repairs to the vessel.

“Criminal negligence,” the Sud daily newspaper declared in a front-page headline. The Joola “should never have taken to the sea.”

Five Spaniards and at least a dozen French nationals are among the missing along with an unspecified number of other Europeans, sources in Dakar said. The Swiss consul said there were at least two Swiss nationals among the missing, while officials in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau said at least 20 of their nationals were on the boat.

The Sud newspaper claimed that some of the passengers had noticed that the boat was unbalanced from the start of the journey.

Another Dakar-based newspaper, Walfadjri, said the tragedy had been caused by “negligence” and “technical failings” affecting the engines — one of which had been repaired from salvaged parts while the other was still being run in.

The paper also blamed overcrowding — after marine officials said the Joola had been designed to carry only 550 people — and condemned the government’s decision to return the Joola to service as “criminal populism”.

“The water rose very fast and in barely five minutes it had sunk,” said one survivor Ousmane Keita, who had clung to a life jacket until help arrived in the form of a fishing trawler.

Senegalese Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye’s government earlier this month showed off the boat’s return to service when he invited Senegalese journalists to join two ministers aboard since the repairs.

Boye insisted on Friday that “the boat’s condition is not in any doubt”, adding that early information showed it had capsized under the combined effect of wind and heavy rains.

But even the pro-government Soleil newspaper joined in the criticism on Saturday.

If the Joola was incapable of travelling in high winds, the paper said, “it should not have been at sea.”

A rebel leader in Casamance, which has been plagued by a violent separatist insurgency for two decades, also accused the government of responsibility in the deaths of passengers.

Sidy Badji said the sinking “resembles an organised, planned massacre” of people from his region, accusing the government of “deliberately putting the Joola into service in an irresponsible way despite its very bad state.”

The Joola served as an important link between Dakar and Casamance, which lie on opposite sides of Gambia’s narrow territory and the river of the same name.—AFP