Fifteen Bulgarians drowned as Macedonian boat sinks
05 Sep 2009 17:52:42 GMT Source: Reuters
(Updates with details, confirmation on number of victims) By Ognen Teofilovski OHRID, Macedonia, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Fifteen Bulgarians were drowned on Saturday when a boat carrying dozens of tourists sank just offshore in a popular Macedonian resort lake, officials said. The accident in Lake Ohrid took place 200 metres (yards) from shore and wreckage of the sightseeing boat, which had been in use since the 1930s, could be seen resting at the bottom of the clear waters. "There were 15 victims of the incident, including one child," the government information office in the Bulgarian capital Sofia said. It said all the victims were Bulgarians and only one of the 40 survivors had been hospitalised. Macedonian Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska said the boat, which had a capacity for 43 passengers, was overloaded but the cause of the accident was still under investigation. Local media said the captain was being questioned by police. A woman survivor told Bulgarian national television the boat listed before sinking. "I cannot swim and exactly at the moment when I sank, I remembered the Titanic movie and the guide who said the lake was over 200 metres deep," she said. "I thought I would be at the bottom because I cannot swim." Local people tried to help with small boats. "We immediately went there," Gordana Rupcevska told a Macedonian TV station. "There were several dead people on the water. We tried to help one who was alive. There were three people we thought we could save but it was too late." Dead bodies wrapped in blankets were lined up on the lake shore. The prime ministers of Macedonia and Bulgaria spoke by telephone and Bulgaria was to send a plane to fly the dead and survivors home. Bulgaria's President Gergi Parvanov was reported to be on his way to Ohrid to console the survivors. (Additional reporting by Kole Casule in Skopje and Irina Ivanova in Sofia; Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Michael Roddy)
The boat Ilinden, which sank on Macedonia's Lake Ohrid, is seen at a dock on the lake, 160 km (99 miles) west of Macedonia's capital Skopje, in this March 24, 2008 ...
