At least 15 people drowned when a sightseeing boat carrying dozens of Bulgarian tourists sank in a lake on Macedonia's western border today.
The boat, called the Ilinden, sank rapidly into lake Ohrid, said Ivo Kotevski, a police spokesman. Rescuers pulled 53 survivors from the water, including four who were unresponsive, he said.
Fifteen or more bodies were pulled from the lake, the deepest in the Balkans, located along the mountainous border between Macedonia and Albania.
"A police diving team is on the scene and we fear more people have drowned," Kotevski said, adding that it was unclear exactly how many were on board.
Witnesses told Macedonian television the boat was about 200m from shore when it split in two and sank.
The TV station said the boat had been carrying 50 tourists from Bulgaria among others and had been travelling from Ohrid, on the lake's eastern shore, to the medieval Eastern Orthodox monastery Sveti Naum about 18 miles to the south near the Albanian border.