Capsized ferry found

More than 200 bodies have still not been found

The wreck of a ferry that sank in Bangladesh last week killing hundreds of people has been found.

It was found some 300 metres from where it went down and officials say weather conditions make the chances slim of raising it immediately.

The boat was licensed to carry only 300 passengers, but reports said double that number were on board.

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia ordered an investigation into the accident.

Partly buried

"The ferry has been located 120 ft (40 metres) under water, about 300 metres (yards) away from the site of sinking," on the river Meghna, Navy Lieutenant Commander Mahbubur Rashid said, the Reuters news agency reports.

"It has been partly buried under mounds of sand."

Government officials at the south-eastern town of Chandpur, near where the ferry capsized, said divers needed to reach the wreck for salvage to be possible.

The chief administrator of the district, Abdur Rab Hawlader, told the BBC: "It is impossible right at the moment because of strong current in the river."

The official said the river is now flowing at at a rate up to three times higher than the permissible limit for divers to go down the river bed.

He said a salvage operation would not be possible unless the river Meghna becomes calm and quiet, something unlikely to happen before the end of the current rainy season in September.

Mr Hawlader said salvage workers are waiting for a decision from the authorities as to whether to suspend operations.

More than 170 bodies have been found in the river.

Some of the bodies were so badly decomposed they had to be buried without identification.

More than 400 people are thought to have died when the boat was sucked into a whirlpool and sank last Tuesday.

The triple-decked MV Nasreen-1 ferry had been travelling from the capital, Dhaka, to Lalmohan when it hit turbulent waters near the town of Chandpur.

Some bodies may still be trapped inside the boat, but rescuers believe many could have been swept further down the river towards the Bay of Bengal.

Investigation

Black flags of mourning have been raised over homes in Chandpur and special prayers have been said at mosques for the victims.

The exact number of missing will never be known. Estimates from officials vary from 200 and 800.

One survivor, mobile phone engineer Khairul Islam, said the ferry was carrying more than 1,000 people.

About 200 people swum to safety or were rescued.

A shipping ministry official said on Friday that official investigators had cited "overcrowding or incompetence" as causes of the disaster.

More than 3,000 people have died in about 260 ferry accidents in Bangladesh since 1977.

A ferry sank in the same spot as the Nasreen in 1994, killing more than 150 people. The vessel was never found.