Hippo Capsizes Boat, Leaving 11 Missing — Including Children and a Baby By Escher Walcott

Children and a baby are among the 11 who remain missing after a boat capsized.

A hippo overturned the boat carrying 14 passengers on the Sassandra River in Buyo in the Ivory Coast on the morning of Friday, Sept. 5, the nation’s Minister of Cohesion and Solidarity, Myss Belmonde Dogo, said in a statement shared on Facebook.

“It is with deep sorrow that we learned that 11 people, including women, girls and an infant, have gone missing following a boat capsized caused by a hippo,” Dogo wrote.

Revealing that three people survived the incident, the minister added that the “search continues in hopes of finding missing victims.”

“Distressed by this tragedy that upsets us all, the Gouvernement de Côte d’Ivoire joins the pain of the parents and relatives of the deceased and expresses its solidarity to the survivors,” Dogo continued.

There are an estimated 500 hippos in the West African country, inhabiting mostly the rivers across the southern area, CBS News reported.

According to a 2022 study conducted by Ivory Coast college researchers, the hippo is cited most frequently in collisions that cause death or injury to humans in the country.

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The latest tragedy took place amid a rapid decline of hippos in the Ivory Coast over the past 20 years due to hunting of the animals, according to an African Zoology study.

“During the rainy season, hippos disperse upstream into smaller tributaries and downstream as far as the coast. As the forest zone is modified by forestry and agriculture, small herds of common hippos have become resident,” the study said.

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An estimated 500 people are killed by hippos each year, per CBS News.

PEOPLE reached out to Dogo for further comment, but did not receive an immediate response on Sunday, Sept. 6.