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A few dozen divers working with underwater lights searched the Bulgaria, a double-decked boat built in 1955 that survivors said listed to its side and sank in minutes on Sunday during stormy weather with nearly 200 people on board.

Nine people were confirmed dead, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said -- one woman who was found on Sunday and eight other people whose bodies were pulled from the wreck overnight.

Eighty people were rescued, most of them climbing aboard a passing boat after more than an hour in the water, but there is little hope anyone else has survived.

"According to the divers, the chances of finding anyone alive are minimal," she said.

An estimated 1 10 bodies, including those of 30 children, remained in the sunken ship, the Interfax news agency cited a regional search and rescue service as saying.

As many as 60 of the passengers may have been children, Russian media reported, and survivors said some 30 children had gathered in a room near the stern of the ship to play just minutes before it sank.

Andrianova said 185 people were believed to have been onboard, but the ministry's regional branch in Tatarstan later said the number was 199 including 18 unregistered passengers.

The bodies of five women, two men and a child had been recovered by 0400 GMT on Monday, said a spokesman for the ministry's branch in Tatarstan, where the boat sank 3 km (2 miles) from shore in a broad section of the Volga river.

The top Volga district emergency official, Igor Panshin, said bodies could be seen in the 56-year-old pleasure craft's restaurants and the hold. Citing survivors, he said the boat sank in about eight minutes.

There were sobs of relief as anxious relatives greeted survivors who were brought to the port in Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, late on Sunday.

"The child is back there," one man cried, wailing with grief as he hugged a woman.

One woman told state-run Rossiya-24 television she lost her grip on her daughter as they struggled to escape.

"Practically no children made it out," the woman said. "There were very many children on the boat, very many."

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered investigators to determine the cause of the disaster and prosecutors opened a criminal investigation. Russian media reports focused on the age of the boat, built in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Cruises on the Volga, which cuts through the heart of Russia hundreds of kilometres east of Moscow and drains into the Caspian Sea, are popular among Russians and foreigners.

The Bulgaria had taken its passengers from Kazan to a town down river on Saturday and was returning when it sank in 20-metre-deep water.