Hippo capsizes boat, 11 missing

Eleven people, including children, were missing after a hippopotamus capsized their boat in southwestern Ivory Coast, a government official said Saturday.

The West African nation's minister for national cohesion and solidarity, Myss Belmonde Dogo, said on her Facebook page that the missing included women, little girls and a baby.

She said the hippopotamus tipped the narrow, canoe-like boat over on Friday, as it was motoring along the Sassandra River near the town of Buyo.

Three people survived the incident and were rescued, and "a search is ongoing in the hope of finding the missing victims", she said.

A 2022 study by Ivory Coast university researchers found that hippopotamuses were the species most mentioned in interactions with humans that caused deaths or injury in the country.

There are an estimated 500 hippos in the Ivory Coast, distributed among the various rivers in the country's south, mainly the Sassandra and the Bandama water courses.

Boat accidents are fairly common in the country, as handcrafted longboats are used to navigate between waterside communities, and are frequently overloaded with passengers and goods.

In April, a dozen children and adolescents drowned when the boat they were on capsized in a lagoon near the principal city of Abidjan.