KAZAN, Russia (Reuters) - Divers searching the wreck of a Russian boat that sank in the Volga found several bodies, bringing the confirmed death toll to eight on Monday, while more than 100 people were missing and feared drowned.
A few dozen divers working with underwater searchlights combed the shifting hulk of the Bulgaria, a double-decked half-century-old boat survivors said listed to its side and sank in a matter of minutes on Sunday in a storm.
Eighty people were rescued, most of them climbing aboard a passing boat after more than an hour in the water, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said, but hopes that anyone else could have survived faded fast.
"According to the divers, the chances of finding anyone alive are minimal," she said.
As many as 60 of the passengers may have been children, Russian media reported, and survivors said some 30 children had gathered in a room near the stern of the ship to play just minutes before it sank.
Andrianova said 185 people were believed to have been on board, but the ministry's regional branch in Tatarstan later said the number was 199 including 18 unregistered passengers and that 79 people were rescued -- 56 passengers and 23 crew.
The bodies of five women, two men and a child had been recovered by 0400 GMT (5 a.m. British time) on Monday, said a spokesman for the ministry's branch in Tatarstan, where the boat sank 3 km (2 miles) from shore in a broad section of the Volga river.
The top Volga district emergency official, Igor Panshin, said bodies could be seen in the 56-year-old pleasure craft's restaurants and the hold. Citing survivors, he said the boat sank in about eight minutes.
There were sobs of relief as anxious relatives greeted survivors who were rescued by the passing boat and brought to the port in Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, late on Sunday.
"The child is back there," one man cried, wailing with grief as he hugged a woman.
One woman told state-run Rossiya-24 television she lost her grip on her daughter as they struggled to escape.
"Practically no children made it out," the woman said. "There were very many children on the boat, very many."
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered investigators to determine the cause of the disaster and find out who was to blame. Russian media reports focussed on the age of the boat, built in 1955 in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation on suspicion of violating rules on the use of watercraft, which could cover anything from poor navigation to failure to maintain the boat in a safe condition.
Cruises on the Volga, which cuts through the heart of Russia hundreds of kilometres east of Moscow and drains into the Caspian Sea, are popular among Russians and foreigners.
The Bulgaria had taken its passengers from Kazak to a town down river on Saturday and was returning when it sank in 20-metre-deep water.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gutter man in Moscow; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
