From the Associated Press

Tuesday October 1, 2002 1:40 AM

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - With the presumed death toll from a ferry sinking nearing 1,000, Senegal's president has conceded that overcrowding helped cause of one of Africa's deadliest ferry disasters and a German newspaper reported the vessel held twice as many people as it was designed for.

Television footage showed the state-run MS Joola listing sickeningly to one side as it cleared port Thursday for its final, fatal voyage.

The death toll Monday stood at 970 but could go much higher - with ticketing authorities saying all children under 5 would have gone unticketed, and thus apparently uncounted.

``Children were found clutching their mothers,'' said Haidar el Ali, who led a team of divers Monday in a recovery effort.

The boat capsized in stormy seas quickly and only 64 people are known to have survived among an official count of 1,034 passengers and crew. Those who escaped the overturned ferry, and hung onto its exposed hull for hours.

Many victims were trapped beneath the overturned ferry. Screaming for help, gasping for air and beating on windows, they survived for hours, rescue divers said Monday - describing scenes of horror in air pockets that had kept the vessel afloat.

``When I dove in, I saw bodies everywhere,'' many huddled near air pockets, said el Ali, whose 16-diver team took about 17 hours to arrive by boat from Dakar.

``We saw bodies floating by the hundreds, the hundreds, the hundreds.''

About 150 military personnel, fishermen and rescue divers from Senegal, neighboring Gambia and former colonial power France were taking part in the recovery. Gambian and Senegalese authorities said they had retrieved more than 360 bodies from inside the ferry, before decomposition made recovery of intact victims impossible.

``I want to use this opportunity to tell the families that I'm sorry we couldn't bring everyone out,'' el Ali said, breaking into sobs.

President Abdoulaye Wade acknowledged the ferry was overcrowded when it capsized in the Atlantic just before midnight Thursday, tumbling under the waves in a heavy gale. He blamed ``an accumulation of errors'' for the tragedy.

Germany's Hamburger Abendblatt daily reported Monday that a German shipyard built the ship 12 years ago for voyages on the placid Rhine River, and designed it for no more than 536 passengers.

With Senegalese still scanning photos and lists of the dead for what at times were entire missing families, angry questions built over why the disaster happened.

Senegalese television footage showed grainy video of the ferry tilting heavily to one side as it left southern Senegal, bound for the capital, Dakar. Some late-arriving passengers hopped aboard later from small pirogues that had caught up.

Other would-be passengers, frightened by the vessel's lean, reportedly changed their minds about boarding.

Navy Commander Ouseynou Combo insisted ``there was no problem of weight or of overloading of a nature that would cause this situation.'' He cited survivor accounts of the boat being caught in a fierce, 10-minute storm.

Children under 5 ride free, confirmed Amadou Ndiaye, station chief for the Joola at its starting point in Ziguinchor, in southern Senegal. Unticketed passengers normally are not counted. Ndiaye repeatedly refused to say whether that was the case Thursday with MS Joola.

On a run from fertile south Senegal to the capital, Dakar, the ferry foundered several miles (kilometers) off Gambia, a strip-shaped former English colony that divides north and south Senegal.

Combo, the Navy commander, said Senegalese maritime officials ``unfortunately'' did not immediately act when the ferry failed to make its regular, two-hour calls to port.

Fishing vessels discovered the disaster first, at 4 a.m., he said.

The government set up five ``crisis centers'' in Dakar for relatives over the weekend, displaying photos of the badly bloated dead in hopes of identifying victims. Many faces were too waterlogged to be recognizable.

Ferries are the main way of transportation between north and south Senegal, in part because travel by road is slowed by border checks passing through Gambia. Merchants carrying dried fish, mangos and other goods from verdant Casamance make up many of the usual clientele.

Many people in Dakar or Casamance said they knew at least one of the passengers, who were mostly Senegalese or from nearby nations. Several dozen were European - including more than 20 from France. Some had been traveling in families, and grieving relatives said they had lost many siblings, sons or daughters.

Marian Tuti Mendy, 40, who had three family members on board, traveled from her home in Serrekunde, Gambia to the port town of Sanyung - the nearest land to where the search was taking place, far off shore, and out of sight.

Alone and forlorn, she stared at the blank ocean.

``My fear is that there may not be any oxygen in the cabin where they are,'' Mendy said. ``But I still have hope. I place my trust in God.''

(jk)