A spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry says nine people drowned after a pleasure boat sank in the Moskva River.
Authorities says a total of 16 passengers and crew members were on board the ship when it collided with a barge shortly after midnight. Seven people were reportedly rescued.
WATCH: Workers tried to retrieve the sunken pleasure cruiser, the “Swallow,” on August 1, one day after the sinking killed nine people. (AP video)
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted Yury Bessedin, deputy director of the Moscow branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, as saying that the accident may have been caused by an infraction of river navigation rules.
The sinking came just three weeks after Russia’s worst post-Soviet river-boat accident — when 122 people died aboard a tourist boat that sank on July 10 on the Volga River in the central Russian republic of Tatarstan.
compiled from agency reports