Nearly 400 dead in China ship sinking as search for bodies widens

 Rescuers extended their search for victims of a Chinese cruise ship sinking to include a vast stretch of the Yangtze river Saturday, as the confirmed death toll rose to 396, marking the country's worst shipping disaster in nearly 70 years, AFP reports.

With most bodies retrieved from the battered ship, officials widened the search scope to 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) of the Yangtze in the hope of finding 46 people still unaccounted for, state news agency Xinhua said.

Only 14 survivors have been confirmed out of the 456 people -- mostly tourists aged over 60 -- on board when the "Eastern Star" rapidly sank on China's biggest river in a storm on Monday, in the central county of Jianli.

The Ministry of Transport late Saturday ordered water traffic authorities and shipping companies to assist in the hunt, which stretches from Jianli in Hubei province, past the cities of Wuhan and Nanjing, to Shanghai on the east coast.

The death toll jumped by over 200 after rescuers used massive cranes to hoist the vessel out of the water on Friday and began recovering bodies trapped inside.

Xinhua put the number of dead at 396 as of noon local time (0400 GMT) on Saturday.

The figure makes it China's worst shipping disaster since 1948, when up to 4,000 on board the SS Kiangya were killed when it sank near Shanghai.

A government spokesman said on Thursday that no further survivors are expected to be found.

  Freak tornado 

As images showed the blue and white vessel's caved-in roof, state broadcaster CCTV said rescuers' torches were visible inside the ship overnight.

Online images showed workers wearing surgical suits handling body bags in the vessel's dark cabins, while others slept on a nearby floating platform, exhausted by their grim work.

At a nearby funeral parlour, AFP saw men also dressed in the white suits driving a convoy of about 20 mini-vans adapted to carry coffins towards the disaster site.

Reports citing witnesses said the 76.5-metre-long (250 feet) and 2,200-tonne ship overturned in under a minute, and weather officials said a freak tornado hit the area at the time.

The vessel was cited for safety infractions two years ago, according to a notice by the Nanjing Maritime Bureau, but no further details have been given about the state of the ship.

Investigators will probe the ship's structure for flaws, CCTV said, after the ruling Communist party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee vowed to leave "no doubts remaining" about the disaster.

Information about the sinking and media access to the site have been tightly controlled, and online criticism of the search operation quickly deleted.

China's stability-obsessed Communist rulers often seek to contain anger over the official handling of disasters, fearing that it could spiral into dissent.

Beijing clamped down on criticism in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake, which killed tens of thousands in 2008, and when dozens died in a high-speed rail crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou in 2011.

 Angry scenes 

Relatives of those on board the Eastern Star clashed with police earlier this week, and an angry woman berated officials at a press conference in Jianli on Friday.

A group of relatives from Nanjing, the city in the eastern province of Jiangsu where the boat began its journey, argued with officials from their home town at a meeting in Jianli on Saturday morning, AFP learned.

A city official refused to make clear commitments to families about them receiving the bodies, showing "impatience", a woman at the meeting surnamed Zhang said.

He responded to questions by telling relatives they should do his job if they were not satisfied, she added.

Family members who emerged from the meeting looked visibly upset as they hugged each other and walked away arm in arm, shaking their heads.

Other relatives who had arrived in Jianli were growing impatient at the lack of information and the lack of access to the disaster zone.

"We have come all this way, but all we are doing is waiting," said Jin Weifeng, who travelled from Shanghai to seek news of his mother-in-law Wang Shuisheng.

A petition posted by family members on social media service WeChat called for "key state leaders" to apologise, an investigation, compensation and the "death sentence" for the ship's captain -- one of the few survivors of the disaster -- who is in police custody.

Local reports said other ships in the area on the day of the accident had dropped anchor after a warning of heavy storms, but the Eastern Star continued on.

More than 3,400 soldiers and 1,700 paramilitary police are part of the rescue effort, Xinhua reported, with the Transport Ministry saying Saturday that 254 additional vessels and more than 2,500 people would join the search operation.