No less than 14 people have died and dozens others were missing after a ferry sunk in northwest Myanmar. The boat overturned along Chindwin waterway in the Saigaing locale, a well-known destination for voyagers. 

According to a local official, 150 people had been taken out from the river yet 85 remained missing.

"We've just found the exact location of the sunken boat, and now we're trying to salvage it using heavy-duty cranes," said Sa Willy Frank, the head of the regional relief department.

"A total of 14 bodies have been found, and 85 are still missing." 

According to Kyaw Htay Lwin, a member of the area's regional parliament, the missing figure could rise once the ferry is recovered from the bed of the river.

"I heard from witnesses that the boat was packed with at least 300 passengers, despite its official capacity of around 120," he said. 

The ferry was going from Homalin, a rural town to Monywa when it sank around 5 a.m. on Saturday near Kani, around 85 miles northwest of Myanmar's previous imperial capital, Mandalay. 

Marine mischances are normal in Myanmar, where numerous people depend on voyaging utilizing swarmed boats that are inadequately kept up and inclined to mishaps. 

In March 2015, 64 people were drowned off the western state of Rakhine when an over-burden ferry sank in bad weather. 

There have been various other ferry mishaps in south-east Asia as of late. In 2014, 304 people, a significant number of them school youngsters, drowned when the MV Sewol boat overturned in South Korea. 

A mishap in China in June 2015 saw more than 400 people drown after a traveler vessel overturned amid a typhoon. 

What's more, a year ago handfuls died when a ferry sank off the Philippines with 189 travelers on board. No less than 26 were accounted for to have died.