# Hippo overturns boat in Ivory Coast, leaving 11 people missing
*Event date: 2025-09-05*
Eleven people, including children and an infant, were missing after a hippopotamus capsized a narrow boat on the Sassandra River in southwestern Ivory Coast, according to government reporting cited by CBS News.
Three people survived the incident and were rescued, while a search continued for the missing victims. The government official quoted in the report, minister for national cohesion and solidarity Myss Belmonde Dogo, said the boat overturned on Friday near the town of Buyo as it travelled along the river.
The evidence packet does not provide a precise count of passengers aboard the boat, but it does say the missing included women, little girls and a baby. That is enough to show how sharply the accident cut across age groups and households on the river route.
Boat travel on waterways such as the Sassandra remains a routine part of life in the south of Ivory Coast, where long wooden boats connect communities. The report also notes that such craft are often overloaded with passengers and goods, which can make an encounter with wildlife even more dangerous. But the supplied material does not say whether overload contributed in this case, so it should not be assumed.
Hippos are among the most dangerous large animals in parts of Africa, and the report cites previous research identifying them as the species most often linked to human deaths and injuries in Ivory Coast. That broader context helps explain why a single animal strike on a river boat can produce mass casualties in a matter of seconds.
The Sassandra and Bandama river systems are central to transport in the south of the country, which means incidents like this can affect not just one family or one village but a wider chain of communities that depend on narrow boats for movement. The supplied report does not go that far into the local transport picture, but it does show how vulnerable those journeys can be.
This incident also fits into a wider pattern of transport risk on inland waterways. The article notes that boat accidents are fairly common in Ivory Coast and points to a separate April case in which a dozen children and adolescents drowned when a boat capsized near Abidjan. Those details do not change the present story, but they show that the river and lagoon networks used for daily travel can turn deadly quickly.
For now, the confirmed facts are limited and serious: a hippopotamus capsized a boat near Buyo, three people were rescued, and 11 others were still missing as the search continued.
The story is also a reminder that wildlife hazards can be sudden and catastrophic even on ordinary trips. In this case, the danger was not a storm or a mechanical failure, but one of the country’s most powerful animals striking a lightly built river boat.
For responders and families alike, that left a grim and incomplete picture: survivors, missing passengers and a search that had only just begun.
