More than 25 people have drowned after their boat capsized in heavy rain at the mouth of a river in Sierra Leone.
A wooden boat with about 50 passengers left neighboring Guinea for Sierra Leone on Saturday but capsized along the Great Scarcies river when a wave struck it during a heavy downpour.
Fisherman and police officials rescued six passengers but recovered 25 bodies. The other passengers were feared drowned although a search was still underway.
Many of the vessels plying trade and passenger routes on inland waterways and off Africa's shores are poorly maintained, with accurate passenger manifests a rarity.
About 120 people drowned after a boat packed with passengers and good capsized on Ghana's Lake Volta in April, a week after an overloaded vessel carrying three times the number of people it was built to take sank off Djibouti killing more than 100.