BARISAL (Bangladesh), Nov 29: Some 100 people are missing and feared drowned after a passenger ferry sank in southern Bangladesh on Thursday, local officials said.

Witnesses said the river ferry had been carrying some 150 passengers when it collided with another ferry and sank, reports said.

The ferry, ML Jahangir, sank in a small tributary of the Tetulia river near Mehendiganj subdistrict, some 96 kms south of the capital Dhaka. It had been sailing from the coastal island town of Bhola.

Some of the passengers swam to safety using lifebuoys and others were rescued by the other ferry, MV Coco, witnesses and survivors said.

Local villagers rushed to join the rescue operation, a district official said. The fire and rescue services were also dispatched to the scene.

Barisal-based riverport officer Golam Kabir said the ferry might have been carrying more than its registered capacity of less than 100 passengers.

Barisal’s district police chief Bakhtiar Rana said that the search operation had been called off because night had fallen.

The search will resume early on Friday with the arrival of a salvage vessel.

“No bodies have been recovered so far and the area has been sealed off,” he said.

But reports quoting local witnesses said at least one body was recovered by local rescuers before nightfall.

The remote area is crisscrossed by several rivers which flow into the Bay of Bengal.

Ferry accidents, mostly blamed on overloading and unskilled skippers, are frequent in Bangladesh, which has a wide coast and hundreds of rivers.

Last month seven people were killed after a wooden ferry sank in a remote marsh in northeastern Bangladesh.—AFP