A motorized wooden boat with about 400 passengers caught fire and seized the city of Mandaka.
A boat has overturned after burning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of the Northwest of Congo (RDC), leaving at least 50 people dead and missing from Huleds, said a local official.
The search for the missing was underway on Wednesday with rescue teams supported by the Red Cross and the provincial authorities, after the accident in the Congo River on Tuesday night.
The motorized wooden boat with about 400 passengers caught fire near the city of Mandaka, after leaving the port of Matankumu for the territory of Bolomba, said Loyoko competent, the commissioner of the river, to the Associated Press news agency.
The incident was while someone cooked on board, Loyoko said.
Several passengers, including women and children, died after jumping into the water without being able to swim. Around 100 survivors were tasks of an improvised refuge in the City of Mandaka, many of them with bath burns.
Boat mortal accidents are common in the country in Central Africa, said Alain Uaykani de Al Jazeera, informing from rubber. He said the rescue teams were experts and did not match emergencies.
Hundreds have been killed in boat accidents in recent years as more people leave the few roads available for wooden vessels full of passengers and their goods.
In December, at least 38 people died after a ferry who transported more than 400 people traveling for Christmas overturned in a river in the RDC of Landastern.
A boat overturned on Lake Kivu, in the East RDC, in October, killing 78 people.