A ferry carrying 116 people capsized off Guyana late on Saturday, and 53 of them had been rescued by Sunday morning. The government has not said how many died or how many are still missing.
The MV Barima went over near Iron Punt at about 11pm local time, which is 03:00 GMT on Sunday, Al Jazeera reported. It was sailing from Georgetown, the capital, to Port Kaituma in the country's north-west.
What the government has said
Prime Minister Mark Phillips confirmed the figure of 53 rescued. The public works minister, Juan Edghill, who is coordinating the response, said: "There is an active search and rescue operation that is taking place, and we pray for the safety of all."
No cause has been given. Authorities have not indicated whether weather, mechanical failure, loading or any other factor is under consideration, and it would be wrong to assume any of them this early.
The vessel was reported to have carried roughly 250 life jackets and eight lifeboats, which is more than one life jacket for every two people aboard. Whether that equipment was accessible when the ferry went over is a separate question, and one that investigations into capsizings usually have to answer.
The gap in the numbers
The arithmetic is the hardest part of this story. With 116 aboard and 53 confirmed rescued, 63 people were unaccounted for at the time of reporting.
That figure should not be read as a death toll. In the Indonesian sinking this week, survivors were still being found three days after the vessel went down, and people picked up separately by passing boats often take time to reach an official count. Passenger figures on routes like this are also frequently revised once a proper reconciliation is done onshore.
But the gap is wide, and it is the reason this remains an active search rather than a recovery operation.
The route
Port Kaituma sits in Guyana's north-west, in a region where rivers and coastal waters do the work that roads do elsewhere. Guyana is thinly populated across a large territory, much of it forest and wetland, and settlements away from the coastal strip are reached by boat or small aircraft rather than by highway.
That makes ferries a public utility rather than a convenience. People travelling the Georgetown to Port Kaituma route are not choosing the water over a road; for most of them there is no road.
It is the same structural fact behind maritime disasters in Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere: where boats are the only transport, they carry everyone, including at night and in numbers.
What happens next
A medical team was dispatched to treat those brought ashore. The search continued through Sunday.
Guyana's government has not announced an inquiry, which would be the normal step once the search concludes. Until then the operative facts are narrow: 116 aboard, 53 rescued, no confirmed toll, and no stated cause.
