Al Jazeera:
Dozens of passengers have been taken to hospital after a tanker struck a river cruise boat carrying 129 passengers in New Orleans, partially submerging the vessel, according to authorities.
The Atlantic Asphalt tanker hit the American Heritage paddleboat on the Mississippi River on Friday at about 12:30pm local time (18:30 GMT), the Port of New Orleans said.
The cruise boat had docked about two hours earlier to begin letting passengers off.
New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno told a news conference on Friday evening that all passengers on board the American Heritage were accounted for and that 32 were in local hospitals, none with critical injuries.
The Atlantic Asphalt tanker “lost control and collided into the cruise ship”, she said.
Passengers were disembarking when the boat “began to sink, and then eventually toppled over and flipped”, sending people into the water, she said.
Video from the scene showed the much larger tanker hitting the paddlewheel cruise boat as metal and glass crashed and crunched, according to The Associated Press news agency.
More than a dozen people in life jackets were dragged from the river, where the water temperature was 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit), onto nearby ships, while others stood near the railing as the boat listed further into the water.
“Surreal, that’s what that was,” one witness, Jamie Holford, told local television. “Fifteen minutes from impact to where it rolled over.”
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