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Rescuers cut three holes into the overturned hull of a river cruise ship in unsuccessful attempts to find more survivors Thursday as the death toll in the Yangtze River disaster reached 65. More than 370 people, most of them elderly tourists, remain missing and are feared dead.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said rescuers stabilized the ship with cranes and then cut into sections of the hull, which jutted above the river's gray currents, to check for survivors before welding the sections back to the hull to preserve the ship's buoyancy and balance.
So far, authorities say at least 14 people survived Monday night's sudden capsizing in a severe storm, some by jumping from the ship and swimming or drifting ashore. Three of them were pulled by divers from air pockets inside the overturned hull Tuesday after rescuers heard yells for help coming from inside.
Chinese officials have not declared an end to the rescue mission even though no survivors were found when the hull sections were opened.
More than 200 divers were working underwater in three shifts to search the ship's cabins one by one, the broadcaster said. Rescuers pulled out 39 drowned passengers Thursday, bringing the toll to 65.
The Eastern Star accident will likely become the country's deadliest boat disaster in seven decades, and Chinese authorities have launched a high-profile response that has included sending Premier Li Keqiang to the accident site, while tightly controlling media coverage.
Authorities have told the ship’s owner, the Chongqing Eastern Shipping Corp., that it needed to stop operating the Eastern Pearl, which was built to the same specifications as the doomed craft. A senior manager at Chongqing Eastern Shipping Corporation declined to comment.
The tragedy comes at a sensitive time because June 4 marks the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and any sort of protest is strongly discouraged.
Frustrated by the level of information coming from local authorities, about 80 family members hired a bus to take them from Nanjing to the scene of the disaster in Hubei Province, an eight-hour journey.
They were seen walking towards the rescue site late on Wednesday evening.
"This isn't going to be much use, we're just doing this for the government to see," Wang Feng, one of the organizers, said.
The families later broke through a cordon of 20 to 25 paramilitary police who had tried to prevent them from going through a roadblock.
Earlier on Wednesday, 47 of the relatives asked the Chinese government to release the names of the living and the dead to them at the rescue site, according to a statement.
"Right now the government has an attitude of complete apathy towards us," said Cao Feng, 40, whose parents were on board. "We just want to be closer to our relatives."
In a separate statement, other relatives questioned why most of the people rescued were crew members, why the boat did not dock, and why the captain and crew members had time to don their life vests but not sound an alarm.
Al Jazeera with wire services
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