BUDAPEST, June 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Another victim of the sinking of a sightseeing boat in Budapest has been found, Hungarian police said, bringing the death toll to 20 with eight people still missing.
The woman’s body was “pulled from the Danube near Szazhalombatta” on Saturday, around 21 kilometres south of Budapest, police said in a statement.
She was identified as one of the South Koreans missing after the accident.
The Mermaid tourist boat was carrying mostly South Korean tourists when it sank seconds after colliding with the bigger Viking Sigyn vessel on a busy stretch of the Danube river on May 29.
“The authorities continue the search for seven missing South Korean passengers and the Hungarian captain of the boat on the whole southern section of the Danube,” police said.
Only seven people are known to have survived the accident.
Divers have been unable to enter the sunken boat due to the strong current in a river swollen after weeks of rain.
A barge carrying a crane powerful enough to lift the Mermaid arrived in Budapest this week but experts say no attempt to raise the vessel is likely before Tuesday at the earliest.
On Saturday Serbian authorities said they had deployed five rescue vessels and 30 police divers to search the Serbian stretch of the Danube for victims.
“The local population has been informed of these searches so they can inform authorities if they find any bodies on the banks of the river,” the Serbian interior ministry said in a statement.
On Thursday, Hungarian prosecutors said the captain of the Viking Sigyn was already under investigation over a separate accident in the Netherlands in April involving another Viking ship, the Idun.
The 64-year-old Ukrainian, named as Yuriy C., was arrested after the crash in Budapest on suspicion of “endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths”.
Viking confirmed that he was on board the Idun at the time of the April collision but said he was “not serving as the ship’s captain at the time of the incident”. — NNN-AGENCIES
