Ferry with 1,300 sinks; 100 survivors found
‘Dozens of bodies’ found after disaster; ship traveled from Saudi to Egypt
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Feb. 3: An Egyptian passenger ship sinks in Red Sea with 1,300 people on board. NBC’s Ned Colt and Robert Hager report.
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BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 9:12 a.m. ET Feb. 3, 2006
CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian ferry carrying around 1,300 people sank in the Red Sea overnight and while around 100 people have been rescued, dozens of bodies were recovered and fears are that hundreds perished.
“Dozens of bodies were picked up from the sea … they were from the ferry,” a police source at the port of Safaga said.
Egypt’s maritime authority said about 100 survivors in five lifeboats have been rescued so far and that the search continues.
The 35-year-old ship, the Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98, sank 40 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada.
The cause was not immediately known, but there were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia’s west coast, where the ship departed from Thursday evening.
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List of past ship disasters
Stability questioned
The ferry was carrying 220 vehicles, and that fact could have contributed to the tragedy.
“It’s a roll-on, roll-off ferry and there is big question mark over the stability of this kind of ship,” said David Osler of the London shipping paper Lloyds List. “It would only take a bit of water to get on board this ship and it would be all over.”
Another scenario is that the ship might have hit a reef.
Ayman al-Kaffas, a spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy in London, told the BBC that “a massive search and rescue effort” was under way, and confirmed that “dozens of bodies of victims” had been pulled from the water.
Other ships, among them a British warship, and Egypt’s Coast Guard raced to the scene, while helicopters looked for survivors from the air.
Officials said the ferry met safety requirements and that the number of passengers on board was less than the capacity.
The agent for the ship in Saudi Arabia, Farid al-Douadi, said the vessel was in good condition, and that the passengers were mostly Egyptians but included Saudis, Sudanese and other nationalities.
Marzouk said the ship — built in 1971 and renovated in 1990 in an Egyptian shipyard — was well under capacity, carrying 1,318 people, including a crew of 96.
Osler of Lloyds List said that last June the ship passed a structural survey test conducted by the International Safety Management Code.
Vanished from radar
The ship disappeared from radar screens shortly after sailing from the western Saudi port of Dubah at 7 p.m. local time on Thursday night, maritime officials in Suez said.
Another ferry traveling the same route overnight in the opposite direction reportedly received a distress message in which the Al-Salaam captain said his ship was in danger of sinking. The agency did not say how the Saint Catherine reacted.
Coastal stations did not receive any SOS message from the crew, said Adel Shukri, the head of administration at el-Salaam Maritime Transport Company, which owns the ferry.
The ship was due in at Egypt’s port of Safaga at 3 a.m. local time, the officials added.
Dubah and Safaga lie virtually opposite each other at the northern end of the Red Sea, which is an extremely busy sea route. In addition to east-west traffic between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, there is north-south traffic through the Suez Canal and to and from the Israeli and Jordanian ports of Eilat and Aqaba.
Mostly workers returning home?
Initial reports said some of the passengers may have been Muslim pilgrims returning from the hajj, which ended nearly a month ago. But the Saudi port of Dubah is known more as a transit point for workers than pilgrims, who mostly leave through Jiddah, further south.
Egyptian workers often take ships from Saudi Arabia back home across the Red Sea.
A ship owned by the same company collided with a cargo ship at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal in October, causing a stampede among passengers trying to escape the sinking ship. Two people were killed and 40 injured.
