'7 dead, 5 still missing after kayakers run into a dam in Slovenia'

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Seven bodies were pulled out of the Sava River and divers searched for five other missing people Friday after a group of kayakers smashed into a dam being built in southeastern Slovenia, police said. Police spokesman, Pavel Perc, told reporters that two people managed to swim ashore after their boats broke up and capsized. Both were hospitalized; one was in critical condition, he said. The accident happened late Thursday, when the group, in two kayaks, apparently hit a dam under construction near Sevnica, a town 90 kilometers southeast of the capital of Ljubljana. The dam, part of a hydroelectric plant, is currently built only to about the height of the water. Slovenian TV journalist Goran Rovan, who witnessed the accident, told the state-run news agency STA that two canoes capsized and broke apart when they hit the whitewater passing through the dam gates. The occupants fell into the river and were sucked into the underwater tunnel leading to the generator turbines.