HANOI, Vietnam — A tour boat filled with foreigners sank early Thursday in Vietnam’s scenic Ha Long Bay, leaving at least six people dead and several missing, police said.
Nineteen foreign tourists were on the live-aboard boat when it went down about 5 a.m. near Titov island, said Vu Van Bot, a police investigator in Quang Ninh province. The total number of people on the boat was not immediately known.
Six bodies have been found, but they were covered in mud, and it was not immediately clear how many of them were foreigners, Bot said. Nine foreign tourists and six Vietnamese were rescued, and efforts were under way to find others still missing.
Online newspaper Dan Tri quoted Do Thong, provincial vice governor, as saying the tourists on board were from 11 countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, Denmark and Sweden.
Bot said police were contacting local weather forecasters to determine whether the seas were rough at the time of the incident.
Ha Long Bay is a tourism hotspot in Vietnam, located about three hours east of the capital, Hanoi.