Search continues for missing after cruise boat tragedy on the Danube claims two lives

Search continues for missing after cruise boat tragedy on the Danube claims two lives
Edited by Travel Weekly


    Police continue to search for three men and two women missing in the Danube River cruise boat tragedy that has already claimed the lives of two people.

    Disaster response units, including 95 personnel, 25 vessels and drones were still searching for the missing along the Hungarian section of the Danube downstream from the crash location, police said in a statement.

    It is believed the Swiss-flagged Heidelberg, a 109m, 110 passenger river cruise ship collided with a smaller vessel carrying eight passengers on Saturday night. No passengers on the Heidelberg were reported to be injured.

    Built in 2004, the Heidelberg has been operating on the river for 20 years.

    Late on Saturday night, local time, a man was found bleeding from a head wound, on the shore of the Danube, near the town of Verőce, 50km north of the capital, Budapest. The bodies of another man and a woman were later discovered nearby.

    “Police talked to the man and from his initial communication they drew the conclusion that he was probably the victim of some kind of boat accident,” Csecsi said.

    Heidelberg has been sailing the Danube for 20 years.

    The body of a second man was recovered south of Veroce, while a woman’s body was found further downstream near a bridge on the northern outskirts of Budapest, where police also recovered the damaged motorboat, he said.

    The Danube at Verőce is roughly 460m wide and is in the centre of an area called the Danube Bend where the river makes a sweeping, nearly 90-degree turn to the south.

    The area is a popular recreational and boating destination and is on a route often used by cruise boats between Budapest and the Austrian capital, Vienna, some 230 kilometres upriver.

    A spokesperson for the Budapest police, Soma Csecsi, said eight adults were aboard the small motorboat at the time of the collision. Hours after police began their search, they discovered the damaged boat in the water, which was then towed to shore.

    Police are still searching for five adults — three men and two women — who they believe were on the stricken boat.

    Police later stopped the Heidelberg, which had a damaged hull, near the town of Komarom, 80km further upriver.

    The deadly accident comes five years after at least 27 people were killed in Budapest when a river cruise boat collided with a smaller tourist vessel, sinking it in seconds.

    The tourist boat Hableany, carrying 35 people who were mostly South Korean tourists, was overtaken from behind by the much larger cruise boat, Viking Sigyn, beneath Budapest’s Margit Bridge, in May 2019.

    The Ukrainian captain of the Viking Sigyn was found guilty in 2023 of negligence leading to a fatal mass catastrophe and sentenced to five years and six months in prison. He has appealed the decision.

    Police have initiated criminal proceedings against an as-yet unknown party on suspicion of endangering water transport and causing the death of several people.

    Cruise captain charged over tourist boat tragedy

     

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