YANGON, Nov 17, 2009 (AFP) - At least 50 people are feared drowned after a packed passenger ferry crashed into an oil barge in an area of Myanmar hit by a devastating cyclone last year, local officials said Tuesday.

The accident happened late Sunday when the wooden boat carrying nearly 180 passengers was travelling along the Ngawun river in the southern Irrawaddy Delta, the officials said.

'The boat sank after colliding with an oil barge. We have recovered 34 bodies and there are at least another 16 people missing who are believed to have drowned,' said an official in the area on condition of anonymity.

'The other passengers were rescued from the water and have gone back to their home villages,' the official said.

The vessel, named the Naywintun, or Rising Sun, was travelling between the towns of Pathein and Thetkelthaung when it sank. The oil barge did not sink, officials said.

Officials in the former capital Yangon said the Red Cross in the area was helping survivors of the crash.

The Irrawaddy Delta was the area that suffered worst when Cyclone Nargis hit southern Myanmar in May 2008. The catastrophic storm killed around 138,000 people and left thousands more homeless.

Most people living in the low-lying region - the least developed part of impoverished Myanmar - rely heavily on poorly-maintained river ferries for transportation around its flooded plains.

At least 38 villagers were killed when a boat sank in the delta in July 2008. In February of the same year ten pilgrims drowned in southern Myanmar after a boat capsized while carrying them to a Buddhist pagoda.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962, and sanctions by the United States and Europe coupled with fiscal mismanagement during decades of military rule have battered its economy.