Nearly all the passengers on board a crowded river boat in north-east India are reported to have survived after the vessel tipped over, forcing them into the water.

First reports quoted police in Assam state as saying twenty of the seventy passengers were feared drowned in the accident, on the Bramaputra river.

But the local district adminstrator for Kamrup said later that all but two of the passengers had made it safely to shore.

Earlier this week, fifty passengers were killed when two boats on the Brahmaputra collided.