Survivors who swam to safety after their overcrowded boat caught fire and capsized in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the weekend said yesterday that nearby fishermen refused to help drowning passengers.

Instead, they looted the burning vessel and beat the desperate passengers with paddles.

At least 200 people are feared dead after the disaster in the southern Congo on Saturday night. Officials say that 70 other people died earlier in the day in another boat disaster in the country's north.

Romaine Mishondo, who survived Saturday night's disaster, said that the vessel was so crowded that it reminded her of "a whole market in the village full of people".

The boat had stopped to pick up even more people just 10 minutes before a fire broke out, she said.

As passengers began jumping overboard, nearby fishermen spurned their pleas for help.

"Fishermen attacked the boat, and started beating passengers with paddles as they were trying to loot goods," the survivor said.

"The fishermen refused to save passengers, instead taking goods into their [boats]. I survived because I hung onto a jerry can until another vessel passed by the scene and rescued us."

Francois Madila, an official of the provincial navigation department, said police arrested two crew members, and were investigating the disaster near the Congo's border with Angola.

Madila said the sailors had not yet said how many people were on board, but that the passenger list appeared to have disappeared in the fire.

Fabrice Muamba, who said he was on the boat when it caught fire on Saturday night on the Kasai River, said he thought only 15 people aboard were able to swim to safety. Boat owner Mwamba Mwati Nguma Leonard said that a survivor and an employee had called to tell him that the vessel caught fire when workers spilled fuel and it ignited.

"At the moment I am crying after learning my boat caught fire," Leonard said. "I was just told on the phone that it was while seamen were putting fuel into the tank that an explosion occurred after the oil touched the vessel's battery." He said he had asked police to arrest the boat's managers as he believed they employed unskilled workers.

The boats that ply the Congolese rivers are often in poor repair and dangerously overloaded. The industry is poorly regulated.

But many people prefer to take boats even when they do not know how to swim because there are few paved roads in this vast country of jungles.

Earlier on Saturday, a boat on a river in northwest Equateur Province hit a rock and capsized, provincial spokeswoman Ebale Engumba said on Sunday.

She said more than 70 people were believed dead. It was estimated there were 100 passengers.