Workers on Wednesday night started to cut open the hull of the capsized Eastern Star on the Yangtze River in a bid to speed up the search and rescue efforts after the cruise ship carrying 458 people went down in a storm on Monday night.

 

The death toll from the ship rose to 29 on Wednesday as hundreds of divers searched the ship where more than 400 still remained missing. 

 

The number of survivors remained at 14 as of Wednesday when bad weather, turbulent currents and technical difficulties further eroded any hopes of finding more survivors from the four-story ship. 

 

The ship was caught in a tornado and capsized at around 9:28 pm Monday in a section of the Yangtze River flowing through Jianli County, Hubei Province. The incident is believed to be one of China's worst maritime disasters in decades. 

 

Late Wednesday night, rescuers lifted one end of the ship and began cutting a rectangular hole on the hull of the ship. The hole was meant to give divers better access to the hull, the rescue headquarters at the site told the Xinhua News Agency.

 

Authorities had previously weighed a different approach where they planned to lift the capsized ship from the water with steel cables, drain the water from cabins and eventually flip the ship over. 

 

According to the Ministry of Transport on Wednesday, turbulent currents remain a major hurdle in the rescue efforts, with the speed of the current reaching 1.8 meters per second. 

 

More than 130 ships and over 200 divers had participated in the rescue operation on Wednesday, authorities said.  

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