China sinking: Yangtze rescuers find dozens of bodies

By BBC News

Yangtze boat disaster

Rescuers have pulled dozens of bodies from a capsized cruise ship in China's Yangtze River, as authorities promised "no cover-up" over the disaster

Hundreds of people are thought to have died, with only 14 of the 456 passengers known to have survived.

 



Rescue workers cut open the hull of of the ship
but have been hampered by low visibility                    

Rescue workers cut open the hull of the upturned vessel but divers have been hampered by near-zero visibility.

Angry relatives staged a protest near the site and broke through police cordons to demand information.

The Chinese government said rescuers would "take all possible measures" to save the injured and promised a "serious investigation", according to state news agency Xinhua.

    

"We will never shield mistakes and we'll absolutely not cover up anything," Xu Chengguang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport, told a news conference.

President Xi Jinping has convened a special meeting of the ruling Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the highest body in the country, Xinhua said.

 

Coffins delivered

The official death toll rose to 65 on Thursday after 39 more bodies were pulled from the wreck of the Eastern Star.

 

Local funeral parlours were preparing for
hundreds of bodies as rescuers gained access to the ship                    

Large numbers of refrigerated coffins were seen being delivered to a local funeral parlour in Jianli, Hubei province, as authorities braced for hundreds more corpses.

The majority of the victims are believed to be elderly.

 

Scores of relatives of the passengers have travelled to Jianli to be near the wreck, many from Nanjing where the cruise began in late May.

 

The families have raised questions about the disaster, including how the ship could have sunk so quickly and why the alarm was apparently slow to be raised.  On Wednesday night, several dozen people pushed through police lines set up to control access to the site and marched towards the river.

 

Officials have now promised to take them to the rescue site on Thursday. Another group of relatives staged a protest in Shanghai, where the tour company most passengers had booked through, Xiehe Travel, is based.

 

Ji Guoxin, whose parents were still missing, said Xiehe Travel had just given them a hotline number and told them to make their own way to Jianli.

 

Another protester told reporters: "We want somebody from the local government to receive us and tell all family members what we should do."