OVERLOADEDWhile war and jihadist attacks have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq in recent years, such accidents are relatively rare. "There were a lot of people on the boat, especially women and children," he told AFP. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board, more than 100," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. Search operations were continuing hundreds of metres downstream from the site where the boat sank, according to an AFP journalist. Previously Iraq's last major boat disaster was in March 2013 when a floating restaurant sank in Baghdad, killing five people.

Source: Daily Nation March 21, 2019 16:57 UTC