At least 83 people have drowned after a ferry overloaded with revellers celebrating the Kurdish new year and Mother’s Day capsized in the Tigris river near Mosul in Iraq.
Col Hussam Khalil, the head of the Civil Defence Corps in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, said the incident on Thursday occurred as scores of people – mostly women and children – were celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring.
Many of the women and children could be seen struggling to swim against a strong current, their heads bobbing in the water opposite restaurants and an amusement park where people had been celebrating minutes earlier.
The death toll from the accident, which residents said was the worst in recent memory, was expected to rise as people waited on the banks of the Tigris for news of loved ones.
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