"The bodies of five passengers have been pulled out," a spokesman for the city's emergency ministry told AFP, adding that the boat had a total of 17 passengers and crew on board, seven of whom were saved.

The privately owned Swallow pleasure boat collided with a barge at 00:58 am Sunday (2058 GMT Saturday) and sank on the Moskva, the river that crosses the Russian capital, officials said.

The sinking came just three weeks after Russia's worst post-Soviet shipping accident when 122 people died July 10 on the Volga River in the central Russian republic of Tatarstan.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011