Despair looms over recovery effort

DAKAR, Senegal -- The toll of victims missing and presumed dead in Senegal's ferry disaster soared by nearly 250 Sunday, with the government now saying 1,034 passengers and crew were on board.\nOnly 64 people are known to have survived the ocean ferry's capsizing. All of those who survived were rescued by passing fishing boats in the first hours early Friday morning.\nAuthorities originally said 796 people had been on board -- already making it one of Africa's deadliest ferry disasters.\nSunday, the government added passengers who had boarded the ferry at a second stop on the way from southern Senegal, and the crew -- bringing the total of those aboard to 1,034, said Diadji Toure, communications adviser for Senegal's prime minister.\nMedia reports have said the MS Joola was designed to hold no more than 600 people.\nPresident Abdoulaye Wade, who told an anguished crowd of relatives on Saturday that the government bore responsibility, ordered an investigation into the causes.\nAuthorities said Sunday the probe should be complete within 24 hours.\nSenegalese and Gambian authorities said Sunday they had recovered at least 352 bodies, many pulled from inside the vessel, where victims had been trapped.\nRetrieval teams piled hundreds of corpses on boats waiting to be brought offshore. In 85 degree waters, the dead were rapidly disintegrating.\n"There is really a feeling of despair among the rescuers," said Mamadou Diop Thioune, with a French-funded marine center whose divers are helping in the search. "There's simply not much hope left."\nIn Dakar, Senegal's capital, grieving families looked at photographs of bloated faces of the recovered dead, seeking out the features of their loved ones.\nAbout 500 relatives surrounded the entrance of city hall, waiting for word and searching for names on the list.\nThe disaster happened off Gambia, a miles-wide former British colony that divides north and south Senegal.\nBy midday Sunday, Gambian and Senegalese sailors and other searchers had collected more than 300 bodies from the ferry, the water and from along the coast, where some were washing up, said Aminata Dibba, permanent secretary for Gambia's presidency.\nAides to Senegal's prime minister said Sunday a total of 352 bodies had been collected, with some going to Senegal. But with both Senegal's and Dakar's navies taking part of the search, and with some corpses being taken to Senegal and others going to Gambia, confusion surrounded the body count.\nWade on Sunday proposed burying the remaining victims in a common grave -- a suggestion to which many mourning families, wanting to bury their loved ones themselves, angrily objected.\nDivers said the MS Joola remained on the surface of the Atlantic, overturned.\nFrench military forces and doctors, working alongside their Senegalese counterparts, deployed two boats carrying divers and a search-and-rescue plane.\n"This is a catastrophe of such a magnitude that everyone of goodwill has to mobilize," said Valerie Junot, of the French Embassy in Dakar.