Rescuers have now recovered 150 bodies from Bangladesh?s turbulent Meghna river where an overcrowded ferry boat sank last week with the loss of more than 400 lives, police and witnesses said yesterday.

Navy divers using sonar equipment continued their search for the triple-deck Nasreen, which was sucked into a whirlpool and sank late on Tuesday. While some bodies may still be trapped inside the submerged hull, rescuers believed many could have been swept by strong currents further down the river?s course to the Bay of Bengal.

Of those retrieved so far, many were badly decomposed and some had had to be buried without identification. The Nasreen, licensed to carry 300 people, had more than 600 on board when it nose-dived into the Meghna near the town of Chandpur, 170 km southeast of the capital Dhaka.

Most of the passengers were asleep when the tragedy struck around midnight. Only about 200 people managed to reach the shore or were rescued by fishing boats. The ferry is believed to have sunk in 60 metres of water.

Heavy monsoon rains and strong winds have hampered the search at the disaster site, where three rivers come together to create deadly whirlpools when the waters are high. The painstaking effort to locate the ferry is being led by navy ship Shaibal equipped with sonar devices. Navy Lieutenant-Commander Mahbubur Rashid said that, if the ferry were found, divers would try to attach lines so that it could be lifted, Rashid said.

?There lies the real hazard. The ferry is believed to be under 60 metres of water but divers usually cannot go beyond 50 feet if the underwater current is too strong,? he said. At least 450 people were killed in a similar ferry accident in May last year at almost the same spot. Ferry disasters occur frequently in Bangladesh, where marine laws are rarely enforced despite huge loss of life every year.