Boat sank in Nigeria, at least 45 died

At least 45 people died when a wooden boat carrying 166 people from southeastern Nigeria capsized off the coast, a doctor said on Tuesday. The boat left on Friday from the remote town of Oron, in Cross Rivers state, and was heading across the Gulf of Guinea to Gabon, in central Africa, when it capsized 40 nautical miles offshore, emergency services and traders said. A doctor at a hospital in the coastal town of Calabar said they had received 45 bodies of passengers who had drowned. David Akate, head of Cross Rivers emergency services, said he had no official death toll yet. Two known survivors were a young boy and a woman who had clung to a gas cylinder and were rescued by fishermen, he added. Yushua Shuaib, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, said they could only confirm nine dead so far. "They are mostly ... traders from the southeast who headed to Oron to board the wooden boat," said Ikechukwu Egwu, a marine transporter in the area.