Two foreign travelers and a Vietnamese tour guide were seriously wounded when their tourist boat collided with a ferryboat on the Tien River in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region on Friday evening.

The accidents happened at around 5:30 pm on Friday on the river section in Vinh Xuong Commune of Tan Chau Town in An Giang Province, around 240 meters from the river shore in An Giang and more than one kilometers from the Vietnam-Cambodia border, local authorities reported.

At that time, the ferryboat in Vinh Xuong that was carrying passengers on the river crashed into the An Giang-based Hang Chau Tourist Express Boat that was sailing tourists from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, with 42 tourists and a Vietnamese tour guide onboard.

The ferryboat tip forcefully hit the left side of the express boat, damaging a large part of the latter and causing many passengers to fall on the floor.

The hard hit caused the tour guide, Ab Dol Ro Zak, 36, a resident of An Giang, to break both his legs and had right arm cut off by a metal piece generated in the collision.

Two foreign tourists, Koehler Dietmar Heinz, 67, from Germany, and Kormann Pascale-Aline, 57, from France, both broke their left legs.

Upon being reported about the case, local police rushed to the scene and helped to take the three victims to the Tan Chau Hospital.

This supplied image shows one of the two foreign tourists who were seriously injured in a boat crash on the Tien River in An Giang Province, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region on April 19, 2024.

The tour guide was later transferred to the Chau Doc General Hospital for further treatment due to his serious conditions, Tan Chau police said.

They added that a probe into the cause of the accident was underway.

“The express ship was running fast in an attempt to pass the bow of the ferryboat but it failed, and it was then hit by the latter in its left hull,” a leader of the border guard station in Vinh Xuong commented.

On Friday night, concerned agencies towed both the vessels ashore for investigation, the official said.

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