SAFAGA, Egypt: Rescuers made a last-gasp effort Sunday to save more passengers from the ferry that sank in the Red Sea, leaving up to 1,000 feared drowned in one of the worst maritime disasters in years.
Less than 400 of the approximately 1,300 people who were on board the Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 were confirmed to have been rescued so far as planes, helicopters and ships scoured the area amid dwindling hopes of finding many more survivors.
For the passengers relatives gathered in Safaga, the doomed ship s port of destination, the hope of hearing of more rescues was slowly giving way to a grim wait for bodies.
Anger continued to mount against the vessel s owners and its crew despite assurances from maritime officials that safety procedures were implemented by the book.
The head of the Red Sea ports authority, Mahfuz Taha, told reporters Saturday that 378 passengers from the Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 had been rescued alive.
But in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, further north, medics admitted that time was ticking away for any survivors still waiting to be pulled out of the sea.
The reason we don t have many bodies is that this happened dozens of kilometers into the sea, it s not easy for any survivor. The rescue operation is continuing but maybe most of them are at the bottom of the sea now. It s like the film Titanic and the sea is full of sharks, said Dr. Abdel Hamid.
I think this is the last day for survivors, after today there is no hope, he told AFP.
A police official said late Friday that 185 bodies had been recovered and that the death toll was expected to soar, but Hamid said so far only 68 had been sent to the central morgue in Cairo.
Strong winds and currents hampered the search and rescue operation despite the assistance of several foreign countries, including France and the United States.
The low number of bodies recovered is because of the strong currents. They even found a body in Dahab, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from where the boat sank, said Futuh Hassanein, from the Red Crescent.
We Egyptians are not afraid of death. It s a fact, people accept it, they really just want to know whether or not their relatives are dead, he told AFP.
At Hurghada hospital, the survivors of what is expected to become one of the deadliest maritime tragedies in recent years were still in a state of shock.
I saw a couple embracing their baby before jumping in the water. They didn t know how to swim, said Saud Habib El-Hotebi. I saw women, children … all these people are dead, the young Saudi told AFP.
Survivors told of the fire that broke out on the packed Panamanian-flagged ferry shortly after its departure. After the crew failed to extinguish it properly, the ship started to list and went down within 10 minutes, they said.
The transport ministry s head of maritime affairs, Shereen Hassan, explained that fire broke out twice on the ship but there were conflicting reports about where the blaze started.
In a briefing to President Hosni Mubarak, who was in Hurghada to visit survivors, Hassan gave the chronology of events, which revealed that search and rescue operations were only launched seven hours after the ship sank.
The owners of the ship, the Al-Salam Maritime Transport Company, defended the record of the ship and its crew, saying they met all international standards.
At Hurghada hospital, 27-year-old crew member Abu Bakr Gaber, was under observation, his room guarded by police.
Mubarak promised $2,600 in compensation to the survivors and twice that amount to bereaved families. The Al-Salam company also promised to pay compensations.
Around 1,200 of the passengers were Egyptians from poor rural areas who had sought better paid jobs in Gulf countries or performed the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Survivors said many of them were bringing back sometimes several years’ worth of savings to their families.
The Italian classification society that inspected the ship, Registro Italiano Navale (RINA), said its seaworthiness had been checked twice last year.
RINA is facing prosecution in France for allegedly failing to carry out proper checks on the Maltese-flagged tanker Erika which broke up off the coast of France six years ago.
Pressure continued to mount on the authorities to provide more information on the missing.
An angry crowd confronted riot police armed with truncheons and plastic shields by throwing stones Saturday. Another group had earlier managed to break the police cordons and rush towards the docks in search of their relatives.
An AFP reporter said angry Egyptians destroyed an ambulance in Safaga as incidents continued to break out sporadically in Safaga. AFP
