BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — President Juan Manuel Santos has arrived at the Guatape reservoir in Colombia where a tourist boat capsized and said that 122 people were either rescued or found their way to shore. He said that six people had died and another 31 were missing.
Rescuers including firefighters from nearby cities and air force pilots were searching for survivors at the reservoir near Medellin where the El Almirante sank with about 160 passengers on board. A flotilla of recreational boats and jet skis rushed to the scene, pulling people from the boat as it went down and avoiding an even deadlier tragedy.
“Nobody really knows what happened,” said Santos, adding that naval officials were brought in to carry out an investigation.
Earlier, Margarita Moncada, the head of the disaster response agency in Antioquia state, had said that according to a preliminary nine people had been killed and around 28 were missing. The discrepancies in the number of fatalities could not be immediately reconciled.
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