Up to 470 Missing as Egyptian Ferry Hits Red Sea Reef, Sinks

A ferryboat carrying hundreds of Egyptian workers and pilgrims across a stormy Red Sea slammed into a coral reef and sank early Sunday, plunging up to 658 passengers and crew into the midnight waters about six miles off the coast of Egypt.

As many as 470 passengers were still missing Sunday night after a daylong rescue effort hampered by high winds and 10-foot waves. Some were believed possibly still stranded on lifeboats that drifted from the rescue scene, where U.S. and Australian navy helicopters briefly joined an Egyptian armada plucking stricken passengers from the sea.

Egyptian and Saudi authorities said the ferry apparently drifted off course sometime before midnight Saturday and struck one of the jagged coral reefs that lurk beneath the surface off Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The vessel sounded a distress signal before midnight Saturday and apparently sank about 20 minutes later, they said.

Rescuers could not begin work until dawn because of bad weather, the authorities said, although three Egyptian air force C-130 transport planes dropped life jackets and rubber rafts to aid passengers from the stricken vessel. Low clouds, occasional drizzle and 10-foot seas plagued the relief effort throughout the day.

It was probably the world’s worst maritime disaster since 1987, and it was the second Red Sea shipping accident this year. In April, 24 people died when an overloaded motor launch sank about 60 miles north of Sunday’s disaster site, which was near the small commercial port of Safaga.

All but 10 of the passengers were believed to be Egyptians, many of them laborers who had been working in Saudi Arabia and who did not have the money to fly home for the holidays. The journey from the Saudi Arabian port of Jidda to Safaga, where the boat was to have docked, takes about 36 hours.

About 150 of the passengers were Egyptians who had traveled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, near Jidda, to perform an off-season pilgrimage, authorities said. The 10 non-Egyptian passengers were believed to be nationals of the Philippines, Malaysia, Sudan and Zaire, and a Sudanese was among the 71-member crew.

The ferry, the Salem Express, is owned by the Alexandria-based Samatour Shipping Co., which issued a statement affirming that all of the 4,117-ton ship’s operating documents were in order and the craft was believed to be seaworthy.

Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki and Interior Minister Abdel-Halim Moussa traveled to the site of the disaster in Safaga, about 60 miles south of the Red Sea tourist resort city of Hurghada, and ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident.

Authorities said there was no immediate explanation, though there were reports that the Salem Express had drifted off course, outside regular sea lanes, after it had come within 18 miles of Safaga. It sank about six nautical miles offshore in shark-infested waters.

Cairo’s state-owned radio quoted Samatour officials as saying the ship had veered off course in bad weather and that attempts had been made, apparently unsuccessfully, to warn it.

U.S. Navy officials in Bahrain said that warships on patrol in the Red Sea had not received a distress signal from the stricken vessel, but they said that could mean either that the captain had not used the normal emergency channel or that the ferry was outside the radio range of the warships.

The rescue operation, which moved into high gear at dawn, included four Egyptian naval ships, three air force C-130s and four helicopters. The effort continued throughout the day, and helicopters equipped with searchlights carried on briefly Sunday night before giving in to the drizzly darkness.

Egyptian authorities said they had pinpointed the location of the sunken vessel and would attempt to raise it today.

Precise figures on the numbers of dead and missing were unavailable, and authorities issued conflicting reports throughout the night Sunday. Sedki initially announced early Sunday evening that 202 people had been rescued. Later, Egyptian television said that the prime minister had tallied 178 rescued.

There was also uncertainty over the number of people aboard the ferry. The shipping company manifest reportedly listed 658 people aboard, including the 71-member crew, while the port security department in Safaga listed the total at only 589.

A security official said that 118 of the first 150 survivors, including four crew members, were hospitalized.

An official of the Red Sea Department of Health said three area hospitals were receiving the victims, and most of those who had arrived by early evening had suffered light injuries. A camp for survivors of the shipwreck was being set up in Safaga, a tiny commercial port with an aluminum exporting plant and several commercial grain silos.

The Salem Express had been scheduled to unload 350 passengers at Safaga, which normally serves the cities and villages of southern Egypt, before sailing north to Suez at the northern end of the Red Sea.

The accident may be the world’s worst maritime disaster since 1987, when a Philippines passenger ferry collided with an oil barge and caught fire, leaving 4,386 people dead. Egypt’s worst previous passenger vessel accident occurred in 1983, when a ferry on Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan High Dam, caught fire and sank, killing 317.