LIMA, Peru — Rescue workers plucked three children and a woman from beneath the overturned hull of a ferry that capsized on a remote river in the Peruvian jungle, killing 15 people, police said Saturday.
The four were kept alive for 20 hours by an air bubble that rose to the top of the hull when the boat flipped Thursday, local police officer Gabriel Ramos told The Associated Press.
Rescue workers heard shouts coming from the hull early Friday morning but were unable to saw through the ship’s thick metal exterior.
At nightfall, navy divers swam through the dark Tapiche River and up into the submerged boat, pulling to safety Karina Vargas Pacaya, 4, Dorita Rojas Pacaya, 10, George Gonzales Pacaya, 12, and Elizabet Pacaya, 39, a state Civil Defense official said.
It is not clear what caused the boat to upend amid heavy rains on an isolated stretch of the Tapiche River, about 530 miles from the Peruvian capital of Lima — although Peru’s Civil Defense agency said it might have been loaded with too many passengers, heavy bricks and cement.
Of about 70 people on board, 30 survived, 15 died, and about 25 more are missing, the official said.
