Eighteen Tanzanian school children drowned Thursday when their boat capsized on Lake Victoria, the third such disaster in the region in a month, a top local official said.

The apparently overloaded vessel carrying children to school was believed to have flipped over in strong winds and villagers were helping to search for survivors, Sengerema District Commissioner David Palangyo said.

"We have a big tragedy here. Eighteen children out of 37 drowned," Palangyo told AFP.

He said the boat carrying 37 pupils from primary and pre-school, aged approximately between five and 14, from Lukungu village to their school on Itendele island capsized in the morning.

Palangyo said six of the bodies were recovered but 12 were still missing.

Nineteen children were rescued by police, fishermen and villagers, the district commissioner said.

He added that investigations into the cause of the accident were still ongoing but preliminary reports suggested the boat was overloaded and may have capsized because of strong winds.

Palangyo said a search and rescue effort led by the police with the assistance of villagers was still under way.

The accident took place along the southern Tanzanian part of Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa and roughly the size of Ireland, where several fishing communities live on islands.

On Sunday, a boat overloaded with passengers and fish capsized on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert, killing at least 33 people.

A similar incident occurred on July 20 when a boat carrying passengers and food products capsized on the Ugandan side of Lake Victoria while attempting to reach a mainland port in Entebbe.

Police and local officials offered differing death tolls regarding that incident, with local leaders insisting 28 had died, while police put the number at 15.

The boat was carrying several tonnes of fish from the island district of Kalangala and lacked the necessary safety equipment.

Waters can be rough on the region's large lakes and boats are often poorly maintained. Accidents often cause a high number of fatalities because many boats have no life jackets and a large percentage of the population can't swim.

Hundreds of people have died in similar accidents in recent years.

The deadliest such accident occurred in May 1996 when a ferry, the Bukoba, sank on its way to Mwanza in Tanzania, not far from Thursday's accident, killing around 800.

"Safety is an issue but we are doing several things," Tom Okurut, executive secretary of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission, told AFP recently.

"We now have common East African legislation providing guidelines, we have finished the installation of a communication ring around the lake to improve response time and we are setting up a search and rescue centre," he explained.

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John Kulekana, AFP

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