A devastating maritime tragedy on Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba has left at least 68 people dead, 18 of whom are children, after an overloaded, aging ferry capsized amid rough conditions earlier this week, Zimbabwean police confirmed Saturday. The disaster unfolded Tuesday, when sudden strong waves overturned the vessel as it carried passengers from the lakeside town of Kariba to remote rural and fishing settlements in the country’s northwest, a region where persistent road damage and a chronic lack of accessible public transport leave water travel as the only viable option for many residents.
Following multiple days of intensive search and recovery operations, rescue teams pulled 22 additional bodies from the lake’s waters over the past 48 hours, pushing the official death count from an earlier lower estimate to 68. Initial official assessments offered no clear figure for the number of children on board, as passengers below the official ticketing age were not counted in preliminary passenger estimates. However, a updated roster released by police this weekend confirms that 18 children are among the fatalities, with 16 of those young victims aged 10 or younger and the youngest just one year old. To date, 77 people have been rescued from the incident, authorities confirmed.
Estimates from local sources suggest as many as 153 passengers were on board the ferry when it overturned, far exceeding the vessel’s official maximum capacity of 90 people. As of Saturday, authorities have not released a definitive total of people on the vessel, nor have they confirmed how many people are still unaccounted for and presumed missing.
Straddling the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, Lake Kariba holds the title of the world’s largest man-made lake by volume, created by damming the Zambezi River between 1958 and 1963. Stretching more than 200 kilometers in length and reaching up to 40 kilometers wide at its broadest points, the reservoir is a critical water and transportation corridor for communities on both sides of the international border.