Nineteen people died when their canoe capsized on the Niger river in central Mali, local authorities said on Thursday.

The light vessel overturned on a stretch of the waterway linking Niafunke in the Timbuktu region to the central city of Mopti on Wednesday, officials told AFP.

After it capsized "19 people were killed, four are missing and 70 survived," Oumar Sanke, of the Mopti civil protection department told AFP.