Dakar: Almost 700 people were reported missing feared drowned on September 27 after a passenger ferry capsized in stormy seas and sank off the coast of the West African country of Senegal, government officials said.

Forty-one bodies had already been recovered from the sea, Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye announced.

Government officials said 60 survivors had been plucked from the sea by rescue vessels and passing fishing boats.

Meanwhile a rebel leader in the South of Senegal accused the government of responsibility in the deaths of passengers.

Sidy Badji, leader of a separatist organisation in the Camance, said the sinking "resembles an organised, planned massacre". He claimed most of the passengers had been from his region.

The ferry, the Joola, was carrying 796 people when it left Ziguinchor, the main town of the Southern Senegalese province of Casamance, for the capital Dakar, officials said.

A trawler docked on September 27 at Dakar with 23 survivors.

A second boat was expected later with nine survivors and two further vessels were expected to dock later, with one survivor each. "That's 34, much less than we were prepared for," an emergency official said.

Twenty-seven survivors were admitted to hospital in shocked and exhausted condition in Banjul in Gambia.

The passengers are said to have included an unspecified number of foreigners, including some from France and other European countries.

French forces based in Dakar sent a search plane and helicopter to the scene of the disaster, where they helped to retrieve several bodies, French sources said.

Neighbouring Gambia said its Navy had sent two vessels to the area and rescued 27 of the passengers.

Casamance rebel leader Badji said the catastrophe could have been avoided. He accused the government of "deliberately putting the Joola into service in an irresponsible way despite its very bad state".

Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye said according to early information, the boat had capsized under the combined effects of wind and heavy rains. "For the moment the boat's condition is not in any doubt," she said.

Officials said the Joola, which returned to service on September 10 after more than a year under repair, overturned in a storm at around 23:00 hours on September 26.

One of the survivors, Patrick Sauverey, told local radio that the ship capsized so quickly that passengers had no time to don life jackets.

"We were watching a video," Sauverey said. "It was raining a lot and the wind was blowing hard."

Maritime officials said that the vessel had been designed to carry only 550 people.

Some passengers on the ferry's first trip following its repair, when two government ministers hosted Senegalese journalists on board, also reported that the vessel appeared to have problems with strong winds.

The Joola served as an important link between Dakar and Casamance, which lie on opposite sides of Gambia's narrow territory and river of the same name.

Casamance has also been plagued by a violent separatist insurgency for two decades.