Forty-three people were still missing after a tourist boat capsized Tuesday evening in the Xiaolangdi Reservoir on the lower reaches of the Yellow River, local government sources said early Wednesday.

The accident occurred at around 8:00 pm the boat Mingzhu No. 2 carrying a group of sightseers, suddenly sunk during a rainstorm in the reservoir in Jiyuan City of central China's Henan Province, and 69 people on board fell into the water.

Witnesses said the wind force at the time had exceeded seven.

Local authorities immediately organized rescue work, but by 4:00 am Wednesday, 43 people were still missing, said Hao Qingnen, deputy secretary of Jiyuan municipal committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), who was monitoring the rescue work.

Earlier report said that by midnight, over 20 people were salvaged and one body was found.

A third-round silt-washing operation is currently going on in the Yellow River and a huge amount of water is running down from the reservoir and churning the sediment in the lower reaches of the river.

The tourists were all staff members of Xinghua Fine Chemical Plant in Kaifeng City, whose management had organized a site survey to the operation site for 129 officials and CPC members on Tuesday.

The provincial tourism administration has issued an emergency notice overnight to ban visit in the reservoir during the wilt-washing operation.

By press time, the rescue work is still underway.

(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2004)