Officials revealed the new death toll today which marks a dramatic rise on their previous announcement when they said 26 people died in the disaster.
Women and children were among those left dead during the incident which happened in Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rescue workers have been scouring the area for survivors and bodies since the disaster on Thursday.
Some 232 people, mainly men, survived the boat capsizing with a number of people found 48 hours afterwards clinging onto floating objects in weakened conditions.
Transport minister Laurent Kahozi Sumba said: "The search for other survivors and bodies is continuing."
Deadly shipwrecks are frequent on the lakes and rivers of in the Congo.
Boats are often overloaded, life jackets frequently missing and many people cannot swim.
Officials said strong winds and overloading caused the M/V Mutambala, which was bound for Uvira further north in South Kivu province, to capsize.
The boat was carrying cargo as well as passengers.
The Great Lakes of Central Africa, the best-known of which are Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, can be as treacherous in bad weather as many seas.
Shipwrecks involving overloaded vessels are frequent and the numbers of fatalities often very high due to a shortage of life jackets and the fact that many people in the region cannot swim.
In March, at least 210 Congolese refugees returning home from Uganda drowned when an overcrowded boat sank on Lake Albert, on the border between the two countries.
That shipwreck, which came days after Kinshasa launched a campaign to enforce the wearing of life jackets on the nation's waterways, was the deadliest in Congolese history, the government said.
Lake Tanganyika, which is one of the world's biggest freshwater lakes as well as being the longest, also borders Tanzania, as well as Burundi and Zambia.
The first Europeans to discover the lake were Richard Burton and John Speke, who stumbled across the inland sea on an 1857 expedition to explore inland from the east African coast.
By the time they arrived at the body of water Speke's sight was failing and Burton could barely walk.
Speke later continued his travels alone and discovered Lake Victoria.
The disaster comes as aid agencies have warned of a growing humanitarian crisis in Congo which they are struggling to contain.
They said there are 600,000 displaced people in Katanga, a dramatic rise from 55,000 three years ago.
Sunday 14 December 2014
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/546890/Boat-capsize-129-dead-Lake-Tanganyika-Congo
http://news.yahoo.com/least-129-dead-dr-congo-boat-capsizes-140111156.html
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