Egyptian Ferry With 1,300 Aboard Sinks

An Egyptian passenger ferry carrying approximately 1,300 people, mostly Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, sank in the Red Sea overnight, and Coast Guard vessels pulled dozens of bodies from the water Friday and rescued at least 100 people, officials said.

The 35-year-old ship, Al-Salam Boccaccio 98, which was also carrying about 220 vehicles, went down 40 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada, officials said, between the hours of 12 midnight and 2 a.m.

"We have spotted several lifeboats with live passengers that we are trying to get to," Ayman al-Kaffas, a spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy in London, said. "It's a challenging operation due to the bad weather conditions."

The cause was unknown, and no distress signal was received.

There were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia's west coast, from which the ship departed Thursday evening.

"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."

Four Egyptian rescue ships reached the scene Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the ship likely went down.

"As well as serious questions about the cause of the accident, there will be serious questions about the time of response from the Egyptian authorities to this," journalist David Hardaker in Cairo told Sky TV.

Britain diverted a warship, HMS Bulwark, to the scene. Sir Alan West, first sea lord, said the assault ship would arrive in 36 hours. But the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain said Egyptian authorities turned down an American offer to divert a U.S. P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area.

The ship disappeared from radar screens shortly after sailing from the Saudi port of Dubah at 7 p.m. local time on Thursday night, Egyptian maritime officials in Suez said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press. The ship was due to have arrived at Egypt's port of Safaga — 120 miles away — at 3 a.m. local time.

The agent for the ship in Saudi Arabia, Farid al-Douadi, said the Salaam 98 was in good condition and left port with fewer than the maximum 2,500 passengers it is permitted to carry. 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 carrying 1,318 people, including a crew of 96.

"The ship complied with all necessary safety measures," Egyptian Transport Minister Mohammed Lutfy Mansour told Egypt's semi-official Middle East News Agency. "The reasons (for sinking) remain unknown."

Osler of Lloyds List said that last June the ship passed a structural survey test conducted by the International Safety Management Code.

Brona Russell was a passenger on the ferry when she was living and working in the Middle East several years ago. She told the BBC "it was the worst vessel we have ever been on," and rolled badly on her voyage. "We were almost rolling out of the beds."

Osler said he would never travel on such a ship.

"They tend to be very old, there's a question mark over the design, and common practice in the Third World is to fit as many passengers on board as possible," he told Britain's Sky TV.

While the ship's owners and the maritime authority referred to the ship as "Salaam 98," Osler said its registered name was Al-Salam Boccaccio 98.

The ship was carrying mostly Egyptian workers, who often take ships from Saudi Arabia back home across the Red Sea. The passengers also included families of the workers returning home from visiting their loved ones in Saudi Arabia, relatives waiting at Safaga port said.

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.

"The Coast Guard is doing everything in its power to try to rescue these people," Tranport Minister Mansour said.

Dubah and Safaga lie virtually opposite each other at the northern end of the Red Sea, which is an extremely busy sea route, with east-west traffic between Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well north-south traffic through the Suez Canal and to and from the Israeli and Jordanian ports of Eilat and Aqaba.

The ship is owned by the Egyptian firm El-Salaam Maritime Transport Co. The company's owner, Mamdouh Ismail, said the ship is registered in Panama. He spoke before the sinking was confirmed and refused to comment further.

A ship owned by the same company, also carrying pilgrims, 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.