Six more dead bodies have been retrieved from a river in the southern part of Malawi, days after a boat carrying approximately 37 passengers was toppled by a hippo on Monday.
The bodies were retrieved Wednesday from the Shire River in Malawi's Nsanje area, according to police spokesperson Agnes Zalakoma, raising the death toll to seven.
Thirteen people were recovered previously, but 17 remain unaccounted for, and the body of a one-year-old infant was pulled from the river on Monday, which Zalakoma said was filled with crocodiles and hippos.
She went on to say that those discovered dead ranged in age from 17 to 51.
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Gladys Ganda, a politician from the Nsanje area, said the villagers were crossing the Shire River to get to their fields near Malawi's border with Mozambique when the hippo attacked their boat.
Accidents on the river, according to police spokeswoman Zalakoma, are common.
She said the exercise is too dangerous because the river is too shallow, and there are crocodiles that most of the time attack people, as well as hippopotamus that cause incidents like the one they were dealing with.
She said that rescuers are still looking for people who have gone missing.
There have been terrible boat accidents in the area. In January, a canoe carrying 15 passengers capsized in the Shire River after colliding with a tree trunk, killing one and leaving six others missing and presumed dead, according to Zalakoma.
