Update | Body count rises as Chinese rescuers right capsized cruise ship Eastern Star
Transport ministry’s assessment is there are no more survivors on the sunken vessel
Rescue teams have righted the Eastern Star cruise ship, after it capsized in stormy weather on the Yangtze River on Monday night, as relatives of the more than 300 passengers and crew still missing complained of slow progress to learn the fate of their family members.
The decision to right the ship was made at about 8pm last night after President Xi Jinping - chairing a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee - ordered an increase in search efforts and "a thorough investigation" into the disaster.
Watch: More survivors unlikely from China's Yangtze river boat disaster
The transport ministry said the decision was made to right the ship after it assessed that there were no survivors.
"In a situation in which the overall judgment is that there is no chance of people being alive, we could start the work of righting the boat," transport ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang told a news conference late on Thursday.
The work on rolling the ship upright was completed on Friday morning, Xinhua reported.
Fourteen survivors and 97 bodies had been found as of Friday morning. The ship was carrying 456 people when it capsized on the Jianli section of the river in Hubei province.
Rescuers, many from the military, worked through the night to right the ship.
More than 200 divers have groped through murky water after cutting through the hull, searching every cabin on board, but have found no more survivors.
Four bodies were found in the Yueyang section of the river in neighbouring Hunan province after salvage workers on Tuesday expanded their work to cover 220km of the lower reaches of the river.
Yin Yanxiang, whose 56-year-old sister was on board with a tour group from Changzhou , Jiangsu province, questioned the efficiency of the rescue operation. "Why did they wait until the third day to cut the hull?" asked Yin, 68.
Another woman surnamed Chen, 73, from Nanjing, whose husband, 78, was in a third-class cabin, agreed: "The rescue was way too slow."
An expert who took part in rescue efforts after a TransAsia plane plunged into the Keelung River in Taiwan in February noted that it took more than two hours for mainland authorities to be notified of the Eastern Star's distress.
"This was a serious lapse in shipwreck crisis handling by the [Eastern Star's] crew," he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
