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Divers seek bodies from Colombia boat wreck

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GUATAPE, Colombia: Divers struggled in the weed-choked depths of a Colombian reservoir on Monday searching for the bodies of passengers on a tourist pleasure boat that sank in a reservoir killing at least six people.


Authorities did not yet say what caused the four-deck Almirante to go down in the El Penol reservoir in the tourist town of Guatape, where Colombian and foreign tourists take leisure cruises.


The admiral in charge of the search, Juan Francisco Herrera, said on Blu Radio that more divers would arrive on Monday “to carry out a bigger search inside the boat to determine whether there are people trapped in there.”


President Juan Manuel Santos said on Sunday that six of the estimated 170 people on board had been confirmed dead.


Sixteen people were still unaccounted for while 134 were confirmed to have survived, said regional government emergency official Margarita Moncada.


Divers were searching as far as 40 metres underwater in “the deepest part of the reservoir” where algae were hampering their progress, she said.


An official in the National Risk Management Unit, Carlos Ivan Marquez, said the six dead were “all Colombians, and no minors.”


Most of those on the Almirante were rescued by other boats or escaped by themselves, officials said.


“It sank extremely quickly. It all happened in a few minutes,” said a fire service captain involved in the rescue effort, Luis Bernardo Morales, on Sunday.


A storm overnight forced the search operation to be suspended and one diver was hurt by lightning, Moncada said.


Divers resumed work on Monday morning in the chilly waters. — AFP


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