Hopes fade for 1,000 passengers missing in the Red Sea

[DaSangarTalib]

:sl:

Hopes of finding the nearly 1,000 passengers who went missing after an Egyptian ferry reportedly sank in the Red Sea yesterday after a fire on board faded as the search for survivors entered its second day, Reuters news agency reported.

So far, 435 survivors have been found by the rescues teams, police in Safaga Port said, adding that most of the ship's 1,400 passengers and crew are feared lost.

Discrepancy in survivor tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

Investigations are under war to determine the fire's connection to the sinking, the minister, Mohammed Lutfy Mansour, who described the fire as "small", said adding that there was no explosion on the vessel, which went down before Friday dawn.

140 survivors were brought Saturday to the Egyptian port of Hurghada, the first significant group to come to shore.

The fire began nearly 90 minutes after the ferry departed Duba port in Saudi Arabia, according to various accounts. However, the ship continued the trip and the fire burned for hours.

"They decided to keep going. It's negligence," one survivor, Nabil Zikry, said before the police tried to keep the survivors from talking to journalists.

"It was like the Titanic on fire," another one shouted.

When the ship began sinking, Ahmed Elew, an Egyptian in his 20s who went to the ship's crew to report the fire, said he jumped into the water and swam for long hours before he saw one lifeboat overturn as it was overloaded with people, according to The Associated Press.

Ahmed said he got into another lifeboat. "Around me people were dying and sinking," he said.

"Who is responsible for this?" he said. "Somebody did not do their job right. These people must be held accountable."

"They left us in the water for 24 hours. A helicopter came above us and circled, we would signal and they ignored us," one man shouted. "Our lives are the cheapest in the world," another said.

Survivors of the ship which was carrying 1,272 passengers, mainly Egyptians, and 100 crew, said that the ferry had thick smoke coming from it when it started losing contact with the shore at about 10 p.m., (2000 GMT) before it sank on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Some of the survivors said they spent up to 20 hours floating in rubber dinghies and holding on to life rings waiting for rescue teams to save them.

Rifat Saeed said he picked up a life ring from the ship before jumping in the water.

"Then I found a big rubber dinghy. There were 20 people in it," he said.

Head of the Red Sea Ports Authority, General Mahfouz Taha said that rescue operations will continue, although a source close to the operations said hopes were fading.

"There aren't expected to be many survivors, because it's been so long since the ship went down," the source said.

According to survivors' accounts, the ferry began listing to one side shortly after it departed, but sailed on for two hours, before it started sinking.

"It just went onto its side and within five minutes it had sunk, Reuters quoted one of the survivors as saying.

Coastal stations didn't receive a distress call, said an official from the company that owned the ferry. However Egypt's MENA news agency reported that another ship picked up a message from the ferry's captain asking for help as the ship was in danger of sinking.

Weeping relatives of passengers are waiting at the port where the ferry should have arrived at midnight on Friday.

"They are not telling us anything," Gadir Mohammed shouted outside the port's gates. "Where are the corpses? Where are they taking the survivors?"

Initial reports blamed poor weather for the sinking of the 11,800 gross ton vessel in the Red Sea. But Egypt's presidential spokesman stated that there could have been problems with the ship.

"The speed with which the ship sank and the lack of sufficient lifeboats indicates there was some deficiency," Suleiman Awad told Egyptian television.

But Saudi authorities confirmed that everything was in order when the ship sailed.

:w: