A fishing boat sank in the Zambezi river in central Mozambique, killing eight people including six children, authorities said Tuesday.

Monday's capsize in the Sofala province comes a week after a shipwreck killed almost 100 people, many of them children, around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) further north.

"The boat was carrying a total of 12 people, mainly farmers," Nobre dos Santos, administrator of the Caia district, told AFP.

"Two people survived and two others are still missing," he said, adding that six of the dead were children.

Authorities said a search was on for the missing.

On April 7, an overloaded makeshift ferry boat capsized killing 98 people. It was carrying many panicked families trying to escape a rumoured cholera outbreak.

The southern African country, one of the world's poorest, has recorded almost 15,000 cases of cholera and 32 deaths since October, according to government data.

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