Seven South Korean tourists killed, 19 missing after Hungarian boat capsizes on Danube

BUDAPEST:  At least seven people were killed and nearly 20 were missing after a pleasure boat carrying South Korean tourists capsized on the flooding Danube in the Hungarian capital on Wednesday, police and ambulance officials said.

The boat reportedly collided with another tourist vessel near the Hungarian parliament building, before turning over on the river, which has been flooding, with very strong currents, while a rainstorm enveloped Budapest.

In Seoul, the foreign ministry said the vessel sank with 33 South Korean tourists and a crew of two Hungarians aboard, adding that seven of the tourists were rescued but seven died, and 19 were missing.

An emergency rescue team is among the 18 officials South Korea plans to send to Budapest, the ministry said in a statement, and it will offer counseling to victims’ families.

A Hungarian ambulance spokesman told state television that 14 people were pulled from the water. Seven have died, with the rest suffering from hypothermia but stable.

A massive rescue effort deployed boats, divers, spotlights, and radar scanning to scour the river for several kilometers downstream from the accident site.

Journalists at the scene said they saw children’s ambulances on the riverbank, showing that children were also aboard.

But the hours that have passed since the accident, soon after 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), make it less likely for new survivors to be found in the central Budapest area, as strong currents have carried people far downstream, emergency rescue chiefs told state media.

The National Ambulance Service mounted searches along a stretch of the river downstream from Budapest and was on alert along a section further south in Hungary, where all boat traffic has been halted.

Television images showed the bank of the Danube closed off by police on the Pest side, across from the World Heritage site of Buda Castle.

The Danube’s flooding and currents made rescue efforts extremely difficult, a rescue diver told the state broadcaster, with water temperatures ranging between 10 and 12 degrees Celsius (50 and 54 degrees F).

The boat, the Mermaid, was a 27-m (89-ft) double-decker river cruise boat with a 150-horsepower engine and could hold up to 60 people, its owner, Panorama Deck Ltd., told state media.

“We are mobilizing every resource we have to protect human lives,” it said, adding that the Mermaid had been in its fleet since 2003, with regular maintenance.

Boat registry Hajoregiszter.hu showed the ship, originally built in the Soviet Union in 1949, received a Hungarian-made new engine in the 1980s.

Neither the registry nor the operator could be immediately reached for comment on the boat’s age.

A shipping expert told state television it was likely the pleasure boat had collided with a very large vessel that had sunk it very quickly.

The hull was found on the riverbed just a few hundred meters from its usual mooring point.