Nine people drowned in a boating accident Sunday after a pleasure boat carrying 16 people collided with a barge and sank in the Moscow river, investigators said. "The boat sank with nine passengers on board, including the captain... who died," the Investigative Committee said in a statement based on the findings of transport investigators. "Seven people managed to be rescued."
Among the survivors was a Turkish citizen, investigators said, with witnesses saying the boat was hosting a birthday party. The accident came less than three weeks after Russia's worst post-Soviet shipping accident, when 122 people died after a pleasure boat sank on the Volga river.
The motor boat collided with the barge at around 1:30 am (2130 GMT Saturday) opposite the city's Luzhniki sports stadium, upstream from the Kremlin, the investigation said.
"After the collision, the motor boat was pulled under the bottom of the barge," deputy emergency minister Alexander Chupriyan said in televised comments at the scene, adding that the barge's crew helped rescue passengers.
It remained unclear why the motorboat crashed into the large barge in a popular stretch of the river for boating trips.
The motorboat was overcrowded since it was "given a licence to carry no more than 12 passengers," the investigators said. It had been registered in the far eastern region of Chukotka, but had passed a technical inspection in Moscow.
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