KABUL (Pajhwok): Thirty-two people have been taken to hospital after an oil tanker collided with a cruise boat carrying 129 passengers on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, the United States, a media report said on Saturday.
The Atlantic Asphalt tanker struck the American Heritage paddleboat on the Mississippi River at around 12:30pm local time on Friday, Al Jazeera reported.
New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno told a news conference that all passengers aboard the American Heritage had been accounted for and 32 had been taken to local hospitals. None had sustained critical injuries.
She said the oil tanker had lost control before colliding with the cruise boat.
Passengers were disembarking when the vessel “began to sink, and then eventually toppled over and flipped”, sending people into the water, she said.
Rescue teams pulled more than a dozen people wearing life jackets from the water and transferred them to nearby vessels.
Port police, firefighters, the Coast Guard and medical personnel were dispatched to the scene to respond to the incident. The river was closed to vessel traffic, the report added.
American Cruise Lines, the company operating the cruise boat, said all passengers and crew members had been evacuated.
The five-deck vessel, built in 2015 with a capacity of 150 passengers, was nearing the end of an eight-day cruise through Louisiana and Mississippi.
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