BUDAPEST, May 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The captain of a vessel that collided with a tour boat on the Danube river in Budapest, resulting in at least seven deaths, has been arrested, police say.
The 64-year-old Ukrainian national was held as a suspect over reckless misconduct in waterborne traffic leading to mass casualties.
The boat carrying South Korean tourists sank seven seconds after the collision during a rainstorm on Wednesday.
Hopes have faded that any of the 21 people missing will be found alive.
A criminal investigation has been launched into the collision, a rare incident on the Danube where navigation is busy but generally safe.
Seven people rescued alive were suffering from hypothermia but stable, an ambulance spokesman said.
Witness saw people ‘screaming in the water’
CCTV footage showed the boat that sank – Hableany, or Mermaid – being hit from behind by a larger tour boat – Viking Sigyn – near the Margit (Margaret) Bridge in central Budapest after 21:00 local time.
No-one on the Swiss-registered Viking Sigyn was injured.
Hungarian police said the investigation yielded evidence that raised questions of personal responsibility so it questioned the captain – identified as Yuriy C., from Odessa – as a suspect and later decided to take him into custody.
Emergency crews found the wreckage of the Hableany, a double-decker river cruise boat built in 1949 in the former Soviet Union, on the riverbed near the Margaret Bridge and were preparing to lift it.
Thirty South Korean tourists and three tour guides, as well as two Hungarian crew, were on board the Hableany.
Most of the tourists were aged between 40 and 50 but the group also included a six-year-old child and a man in his 70s, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
The seven rescued alive included a 31-year-old passenger identified only by her surname Jung, who told Yonhap: “The current was so fast and people were floating away.”
Another survivor, a 32-year-old woman named as Yoon, said: “The boat flipped instantly and capsized.”
The rescue operation continued with boats, divers, spotlights, and radar scanning along the river, where the temperature of the water was between 10C and 12C (50F-54F).
The seven confirmed victims were not wearing life jackets and three of them were found several kilometres from the site of the collision, police said.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said his government planned “to co-operate with the Hungarian government to thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident”. — NNN-AGENCIES
