According to media reports, at least 78 people have drowned and many more are missing after a boat belived to be carrying 278 passengers capsized just a few hundred metres from the shore of Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- The accident happened just as the vessel, MV Merdy, was about to dock at the port of Kituku, just outside the city of Goma, after crossing the lake from the town of Minova.
- Lake Kivu is one of the African Great Lakes.
- Lake Kivu is situated on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and is in the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift.
Lake Kivu empties into the Rusizi River, which flows southwards into Lake Tanganyika.
