The government of Chad declared a day of national mourning today after a heavily laden trailer lorry carrying scores of passengers plunged off a bridge into the Chari River.
Government spokesman Nadjo Abdelkerim said 29 bodies had been pulled from river's muddy waters. He said 15 people had taken to hospital with injuries sustained when the lorry and trailer went off the single-lane Chagoua bridge on Thursday night, and another seven survived uninjured.
The driver reportedly was trying to avoid a pedestrian approaching from the southern end of the unlit bridge.
A crane belonging to an Egyptian construction company managed to raise the truck from the river but not the trailer.
It was feared the bodies of many of the passengers, who had been riding on top of sacks of grain and rice, were trapped under the trailer.
Abdelkerim said rescuers, most of them fishermen, would nevertheless continue to search for bodies.
Lorries pulling trailers are the main form of long-distance transport for both people and goods in Chad and many other parts of Africa. During the hot, dry season, drivers and passengers prefer to travel at night when it is cooler.
A survivor said he didn't know the exact number of people who had been riding with him on the sacks but guessed there were at least 100.
The bridge, more than 40 years old and poorly maintained, is the main link between N'Djamena and southern Chad, where most of the country's seven million people live.
On April 1, at least 35 people died in Kenya in east Africa when a speeding bus rammed another on a bridge and both plunged into the rain-swollen Sabaki River. Authorities believe that a number of bodies were carried into the nearby Indian Ocean.
AP