The shipwreck occurred in the province of Mai-Ndombe, after the boat, which was sailing towards the country's capital, Kinshasa, on the Kwa River, broke down and collided with another on the night of June 10.
"The bodies were trapped in the boat that broke down in the middle of the night on the great River Kwa bound for Kinshasa," Ricky Masala, civil society spokesman in Mai-Ndombe, told Spanish news agency EFE today, adding that 13 Bodies were found on the riverbed in Lediba.
According to Masala, most of the bodies are already in a state of decomposition, as they were discovered almost a week after the sinking.
"Together with the Red Cross, we hope to find the other 63 people who are still missing," he added.
On Thursday, 12 bodies were recovered after searches carried out by the province's River Commission, in collaboration with the Red Cross, the Directorate-General for Migrations, the body that controls all entry points into the country and the different regions, and local volunteers .
Eight bodies were buried in the territory of Mushie, from where the sunken boat left for Kinshasa on the night of the tragedy, and the other four were buried in the area of the wreck, near the village of Lediba.
Following the accident, the second vessel sank and only 185 of the 273 passengers it was carrying managed to swim to safety.
Shipwrecks are relatively frequent in the Congo basin, where the Kwa River flows, because rivers and lakes are used daily as a means of transport in a country with little infrastructure and dense forests, which borders Portuguese-speaking Angola.
The boats, which are often precarious, are often crowded and signage is almost non-existent.
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