A passenger ship named Dongfangzhixing (Eastern Star) carrying 458 people, including 406 Chinese passengers, 5 travel agency workers and 47 crew members, sank on Monday night in the Jianli section of the Yangtze River in China. According to officials 15 people have been rescued with hundreds still missing. The captain and the chief engineer both survived and claimed that the ship sank quickly after being caught in a cyclone. Rescuers fought bad weather on Tuesday as they searched for the missing, many of them elderly Chinese tourists, in one of China's worst shipping disasters in decades.
Scenes From China's Yangtze River Disaster
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A woman is helped after being pulled from a sunken ship by divers in Jianli, Hubei province, China, on June 2, 2015. Divers pulled the 65-year-old woman from the hull of the passenger ship carrying 458 people that capsized on China's Yangtze River, state media said on Tuesday. #
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Paramilitary policemen assemble to get ready to travel to Hubei province for rescue operations after a ship sank in the Jianli section of the Yangtze River, at a port in Chongqing, on June 2, 2015. #
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Paramilitary policemen assemble to get ready to travel to Hubei province for rescue operations after a ship sank in the Jianli section of the Yangtze River, at a port in Chongqing, on June 2, 2015. #
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Chinese soldiers march along the embankment past police officers, at center, stopping journalists from getting near to a command center which has been set up for rescue operations of the capsized cruise ship on the Yangtze River on June 2, 2015. #
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A relative of passengers on the sunken ship pulls on the door of a closed office of Xiehe Travel in Shanghai, China, on June 2, 2015. The signs read: "People in charge of Xiehe Travel headed out of Shanghai to take care of the sunken ship accident at the site. For details of the accident please contact Jianli Maritime bureau. Arrangements for customers registered for other trips will be informed separately." #
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A relative of Shanghai passengers on board the sunken cruise ship is attended to by a medical worker as she waits for answers at a government office in Shanghai on June 2, 2015. Relatives stormed a government office to demand for action after the tourist agency which organized the tour failed to help them. #
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