1,000 rescued after B'desh ferry hits bridge

DHAKA (AFP) - At least one thousand people were rescued in southern Bangladesh after a packed ferry hit a bridge in dense fog late Tuesday and started taking on water, an official said.
The boats hull developed a crack and took in water after hitting a column of a bridge on the Sandhya River at Shikarpur in southern Barisal district, government administrator Priya Sindhu Talukdar told AFP by phone.
There were about 1,000-1,200 passengers in the ferry. But the crew managed to land it to a shoal while other ferries rushed in to rescue the panicked passengers, Talukdar said.
It appears nobody is missing, he said, adding rescue workers were flushing out water from the submerged lower section of the MV-Shuvraj-2 to see whether anyone was trapped.
The accident was the third to happen in less than three weeks in the delta nation.
At least 85 people drowned late November when an overloaded triple-decker ferry capsized on the southern Bangladeshi island of Bhola. A week later another boat sank, leaving 46 people dead.
Boat and ferry accidents due to lax safety standards and overloading are common in Bangladesh, which is criss-crossed by 230 rivers.
More than 3,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives in ferry accidents since 1977.