By SCOTT CAMPBELL From Sunday Express UK

The death toll in the Eastern Star cruise ship capsize has risen to 396 – making it one of the deadliest boat tragedies in China’s history.

It is thought that the vessel overturned in a freak storm – but the surviving captain and his first engineer have been taken into custody.

Passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its cruise after the storm started in a section of Hubei province.

A weather warning had been issued earlier in the evening.

State media outlets said hundreds more bodies were found overnight, bringing the death toll to 396.

It had earlier been raised to 331.

More than 100 passengers remain unaccounted for from the more than 450 who were on board.

Many of them were elderly tourists taking a cruise from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing.

Fourteen people survived, including three pulled out by divers from air pockets in the overturned hull on Tuesday.

Disaster teams put chains around the hull and used cranes to roll the banged-up, white and blue boat upright.

They then gradually lifted it out of the grey currents of the Yangtze on Friday.

Many on board the boat were believed to be sleeping at the time of the disaster.

An official source said seven people had swum to shore to raise the alarm.

China’s deadliest maritime disaster in recent decades was the Dashun ferry, which caught fire and capsized off Shandong province in November 1999, killing about 280.

The Eastern Star disaster could become the country’s worst since the sinking of the SS Kiangya off Shanghai in 1948.

It killed anywhere from 2,750 to nearly 4,000 people.

IMAGES:

Rescuers frantically searched for survivors

Rescuers work on the capsized boat GETTY

A passenger relative waits for information on the capsized boat REX

For more on this story go to: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/581586/China-boat-sink-Yangtze-River-water-incident-Xi-Jinping-rescue-Hubei-danger?_ga=1.185652905.1673708706.1371141487