At least 44 dead after ferry capsizes in Zimbabwe's Lake Kariba

The number of deaths after a ferry capsized on a huge lake in Zimbabwe has risen again to 44, officials have said.

The number of deaths from the incident on Lake ‌Kariba on Tuesday had previously been recorded at 15 by officials, which then rose to 37 earlier on Wednesday.

Police said in a post on X that bodies had been retrieved from the lake that forms part of the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, but they did not update how many people were injured or missing.

The southern African country's national disaster management agency said 77 people had been rescued.

"Some of us survived by standing on top of the capsized hull," one of the two crew members who survived, Anyway Chambati, told state broadcaster ZBC News. "Before it went down, passengers were screaming at us that the boat was flooding, water was pouring into the engine room and goods were spilling out."

The boat has a carrying capacity of 90 people, the disaster management agency said. Mr Chambati said he was in charge of ticketing and that he counted 153 people on board, including crew and infants, before the accident.

Investigations suggested the boat ​was overloaded when it capsized during heavy winds on the lake, officers ​said on Wednesday.

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Multiple witnesses told ZBC News that passengers urged the captain to turn back as waves grew stronger, only to be dismissed.

Those pulled out of the water by rescue teams, supported by an underwater search unit, were taken to Long Island, a small island on the lake.

From there, they were brought to land on CPU vessels.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared the incident a state of disaster.

Lake Kariba is the largest man-made lake in the world by volume, measuring 124 miles (200km) long and up to 25 miles (40km) wide in places.

It was created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by building a dam wall to block the Zambezi River, resulting in a valley slowly filling with water to form a huge lake.

(c) Sky News 2026: At least 44 dead after ferry capsizes in Zimbabwe's Lake Kariba