Yangtze Ship Disaster: Nearly 400 Confirmed Dead
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
June 6, 2015
Nearly 400 bodies are recovered from a Chinese ship that capsized on the Yangtze River. Only 14 survivors, one of them the captain, were found after the ship carrying 456 people sank on Monday night.
Disaster teams found hundreds more bodies overnight and on Saturday morning after pulling the overturned river cruise boat upright with cranes and gradually raising it up from the currents of the river.
Jiang Zhao, general manager of the company which operated the Eastern Star, bowed in apology for the disaster during an interview with state media on Friday, saying they would "fully" cooperate with the investigation.
Authorities have attributed the capsizing of the river cruise ship Monday to a storm but also have placed the captain and first engineer under police custody.
Passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its cruise after the storm started and despite a weather warning earlier in the evening.
More a thousand family members have come to Jianli in the central Hubei province, where the ship went down, many expressing frustration at the lack of information from the government.
Beijing has pledged there would be "no cover-up" in the probe into the tragedy.
